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ESSAYS 

IN 

POPULAR   PHILOSOPHY 


Sutljor 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  PSYCHOLOGY. 
2  vols.  8vo.  New  York  :  Henry  Holt  &  Co.  London  : 
Macmillan  &  Co.    1890. 

PSYCHOLOGY:  BRIEFER  COURSE  (TEXT  BOOK). 
izmo.  New  York:  Henry  Holt  &  Co.  London: 
Macmillan  &  Co.  1892. 

THE   WILL  TO    BELIEVE,  AND   OTHER    ESSAYS 
IN   POPULAR  PHILOSOPHY. 
iimo.  New  York,  London,  Bombay  and  Calcutta: 
Longmans,  Green  &  Co.    1897. 

HUMAN    IMMORTALITY:    TWO    SUPPOSED   OB- 
JECTIONS TO  THE  DOCTRINE. 
i6mo.   Boston:  Houghton   Mifflin  Co.   1898. 

TALKS  TO  TEACHERS  ON  PSYCHOLOGY:  AND 
TO  STUDENTS  ON  SOME  OF  LIFE'S  IDEALS.  . 
i2mo.  New  York  :  Henry  Holt  &  Co.  London, 
Bombay  and  Calcutta  :  Longmans,  Green  &  Co.  1899. 

THE  VARIETIES   OF    RELIGIOUS    EXPERIENCE: 
A  STUDY  IN   HUMAN  NATURE. 
Gifford  Lectures  delivered  at  Edinburgh  in  1901-1902. 
8vo.     New  York,    London,   Bombay  and  Calcutta: 
Longmans,  Green  &  Co.    1902. 

PRAGMATISM:  A  NEW  NAME  FOR  SOME  OLD 
WAYS  OF  THINKING:  POPULAR  LECTURES 
ON  PHILOSOPHY. 

New  York,  London,  Bombay  and  Calcutta:  Long- 
mans, Green  &  Co.    1907. 

A    PLURALISTIC    UNIVERSE:    HIBBERT    LEC- 
TURES AT  MANCHESTER  COLLEGE  ON   THE 
PRESENT   SITUATION    IN   PHILOSOPHY. 
New  York,  London,  Bombay,  and  Calcutta  :  Long- 
mans, Green  &  Co.     1909. 

THE  MEANING  OF  TRUTH:  A  SEQUEL  TO 
"  PRAGMATISM." 

New  York,  London,  Bombay,  and  Calcutta  :  Long- 
mans, Green  &  Co.     1909. 

THE  LITERARY  REMAINS  OF  HENRY  JAMES. 
Edited,  with  an  Introduction,  by  WILLIAM  JAMES. 
With    Portrait.    Crown    8vo.      Boston  :     Houghton 
Mifflin  Co.     1885. 


THE  WILL  TO    BELIEVE 

AND   OTHER   ESSAYS   IN 
POPULAR    PHILOSOPHY 

BY   WILLIAM   JAMES 


NEW  IMPRESSION 


LONGMANS,    GREEN,    AND    CO. 

FOURTH  AVENUE  <5r-  30TH  STREET,  NEW  YORK 

LONDON,  BOMBAY,  AND  CALCUTTA 

1912 


Copyright,  i8g6 
BY  WILLIAM  JAMES 


First  Edition,  February,  1897, 
Reprinted,  May,  1897,  September,  £897, 
March,  1898,  August,  1899,  June,  1902, 
January,  1903,  May,  1904,  June,  1905, 
March,  1007,  April,  1908, 
September,  1909,  December,  1910, 
November,  1911,  November,  1912 


THK'PLIMPTON'PRBSS 

[W  • D -O] 
NORWOOD«MASS«U'S«A 


'SRLF. 
IJIRL 


g 


To 

My  Old  Friend, 
CHARLES    SANDERS    PEIRCE, 

To  whose  philosophic  comradeship  in  old  times 
and  to  whose  writings  in  more  recent  years 
I  owe  more  incitement  and  help  than 
I  can  express  or  repay. 


PREFACE. 


AT  most  of  our  American  Colleges  there  are  Clubs 
formed  by  the  students  devoted  to  particular 
branches  of  learning ;  and  these  clubs  have  the  laud- 
able custom  of  inviting  once  or  twice  a  year  some 
maturer  scholar  to  address  them,  the  occasion  often 
being  made  a  public  one.  I  have  from  time  to  time 
accepted  such  invitations,  and  afterwards  had  my  dis- 
course printed  in  one  or  other  of  the  Reviews.  It 
has  seemed  to  me  that  these  addresses  might  now  be 
worthy  of  collection  in  a  volume,  as  they  shed  explana- 
tory light  upon  each  other,  and  taken  together  express 
a  tolerably  definite  philosophic  attitude  in  a  very  un- 
technical  way. 

Were  I  obliged  to  give  a  short  name  to  the  attitude 
in  question,  I  should  call  it  that  of  radical  empiri- 
cism, in  spite  of  the  fact  that  such  brief  nicknames 
are  nowhere  more  misleading  than  in  philosophy. 
I  say  'empiricism,'  because  it  is  contented  to  regard  its 
most  assured  conclusions  concerning  matters  of  fact 
as  hypotheses  liable  to  modification  in  the  course  of 
future  experience  ;  and  I  say  '  radical,'  because  it  treats 
the  doctrine  of  monism  itself  as  an  hypothesis,  and, 


viii  Preface. 

unlike  so  much  of  the  half-way  empiricism  that  is 
current  under  the  name  of  positivism  or  agnosticism 
or  scientific  naturalism,  it  does  not  dogmatically  af- 
firm monism  as  something  with  which  all  experience 
has  got  to  square.  The  difference  between  monism 
and  pluralism  is  perhaps  the  most  pregnant  of  all  the 
differences  in  philosophy.  Primd  facie  the  world  is 
a  pluralism  ;  as  we  find  it,  its  unity  seems  to  be  that 
of  any  collection ;  and  our  higher  thinking  consists 
chiefly  of  an  effort  to  redeem  it  from  that  first  crude 
form.  Postulating  more  unity  than  the  first  experi- 
ences yield,  we  also  discover  more.  But  absolute  unity, 
in  spite  of  brilliant  dashes  in  its  direction,  still  remains 
undiscovered,  still  remains  a  Grenzbegriff,  "  Ever  not 
quite  "  must  be  the  rationalistic  philosopher's  last  con- 
fession concerning  it.  After  all  that  reason  can  do 
has  been  done,  there  still  remains  the  opacity  of  the 
finite  facts  as  merely  given,  with  most  of  their  pecu- 
liarities mutually  unmediated  and  unexplained.  To 
the  very  last,  there  are  the  various  '  points  of  view ' 
which  the  philosopher  must  distinguish  in  discussing 
the  world ;  and  what  is  inwardly  clear  from  one  point 
remains  a  bare  externality  and  datum  to  the  other. 
The  negative,  the  alogical,  is  never  wholly  banished. 
Something  —  "call  it  fate,  chance,  freedom,  sponta- 
neity, the  devil,  what  you  will "  —  is  still  wrong  and 
other  and  outside  and  unincluded,  from  your  point  of 
view,  even  though  you  be  the  greatest  of  philosophers. 
Something  is  always  mere  fact  and  givenness ;  and 
there  may  be  in  the  whole  universe  no  one  point  of 
view  extant  from  which  this  would  not  be  found  to 
be  the  case.  "  Reason,"  as  a  gifted  writer  says,  "  is 


Preface.  ix 

but  one  item  in  the  mystery ;  and  behind  the  proud- 
est consciousness  that  ever  reigned,  reason  and  won- 
der blushed  face  to  face.  The  inevitable  stales,  while 
doubt  and  hope  are  sisters.  Not  unfortunately  the 
universe  is  wild, — game-flavored  as  a  hawk's  wing. 
Nature  is  miracle  all ;  the  same  returns  not  save  to 
bring  the  different.  The  slow  round  of  the  engrav- 
er's lathe  gains  but  the  breadth  of  a  hair,  but  the 
difference  is  distributed  back  over  the  whole  curve, 
never  an  instant  true,  —  ever  not  quite."  J 

This  is  pluralism,  somewhat  rhapsodically  ex- 
pressed. He  who  takes  for  his  hypothesis  the  no- 
tion that  it  is  the  permanent  form  of  the  world  is 
what  I  call  a  radical  empiricist.  For  him  the  crudity 
of  experience  remains  an  eternal  element  thereof. 
There  is  no  possible  point  of  view  from  which  the 
world  can  appear  an  absolutely  single  fact.  Real  pos- 
sibilities, real  indeterminations,  real  beginnings,  real 
ends,  real  evil,  real  crises,  catastrophes,  and  escapes, 
a  real  God,  and  a  real  moral  life,  just  as  common- 
sense  conceives  these  things,  may  remain  in  empiri- 
cism as  conceptions  which  that  philosophy  gives  up 
the  attempt  either  to  '  overcome '  or  to  reinterpret  in 
monistic  form. 

Many  of  my  professionally  trained  confreres  will 
smile  at  the  irrationalism  of  this  view,  and  at  the 
artlessness  of  my  essays  in  point  of  technical  form. 
But  they  should  be  taken  as  illustrations  of  the  radi- 
cally empiricist  attitude  rather  than  as  argumenta- 
tions for  its  validity.  That  admits  meanwhile  of  be- 

1  B.  P.  Blood  :  The  Flaw  in  Supremacy :  Published  by  the  Author, 
Amsterdam,  N.  Y.,  1893. 


x  Preface. 

ing  argued  in  as  technical  a  shape  as  any  one  can 
desire,  and  possibly  I  may  be  spared  to  do  later  a 
share  of  that  work.  Meanwhile  these  essays  seem 
to  light  up  with  a  certain  dramatic  reality  the  atti- 
tude itself,  and  make  it  visible  alongside  of  the  higher 
and  lower  dogmatisms  between  which  in  the  pages  of 
philosophic  history  it  has  generally  remained  eclipsed 
from  sight. 

The  first  four  essays  are  largely  concerned  with 
defending  the  legitimacy  of  religious  faith.  To  some 
rationalizing  readers  such  advocacy  will  seem  a  sad 
misuse  of  one's  professional  position.  Mankind,  they 
will  say,  is  only  too  prone  to  follow  faith  unreason- 
ingly,  and  needs  no  preaching  nor  encouragement  in 
that  direction.  I  quite  agree  that  what  mankind  at 
large  most  lacks  is  criticism  and  caution,  not  faith. 
Its  cardinal  weakness  is  to  let  belief  follow  recklessly 
upon  lively  conception,  especially  when  the  conception 
has  instinctive  liking  at  its  back.  I  admit,  then,  that 
were  I  addressing  the  Salvation  Army  or  a  miscella- 
neous popular  crowd  it  would  be  a  misuse  of  oppor- 
tunity to  preach  the  liberty  of  believing  as  I  have  in 
these  pages  preached  it.  What  such  audiences  most 
need  is  that  their  faiths  should  be  broken  up  and  ven- 
tilated, that  the  northwest  wind  of  science  should  get 
into  them  and  blow  their  sickliness  and  barbarism 
away.  But  academic  audiences,  fed  already  on  sci- 
ence, have  a  very  different  need.  Paralysis  of  their 
native  capacity  for  faith  and  timorous  abulia  in  the 
religious  field  are  their  special  forms  of  mental  weak- 
ness, brought  about  by  the  notion,  carefully  instilled, 
that  there  is  something  called  scientific  evidence  by 


Preface.  xi 

waiting  upon  which  they  shall  escape  all  danger  of 
shipwreck  in  regard  to  truth.  But  there  is  really  no 
scientific  or  other  method  by  which  men  can  steer 
safely  between  the  opposite  dangers  of  believing  too 
little  or  of  believing  too  much.  To  face  such  dangers 
is  apparently  our  duty,  and  to  hit  the  right  channel 
between  them  is  the  measure  of  our  wisdom  as  men. 
It  does  not  follow,  because  recklessness  may  be  a 
vice  in  soldiers,  that  courage  ought  never  to  be 
preached  to  them.  What  should  be  preached  is 
courage  weighted  with  responsibility,  —  such  courage 
as  the  Nelsons  and  Washingtons  never  failed  to  show 
after  they  had  taken  everything  into  account  that 
might  tell  against  their  success,  and  made  every  pro- 
vision to  minimize  disaster  in  case  they  met  defeat. 
I  do  not  think  that  any  one  can  accuse  me  of  preach- 
ing reckless  faith.  I  have  preached  the  right  of  the 
individual  to  indulge  his  personal  faith  at  his  personal 
risk.  I  have  discussed  the  kinds  of  risk ;  I  have  con- 
tended that  none  of  us  escape  all  of  them ;  and  I 
have  only  pleaded  that  it  is  better  to  face  them  open- 
eyed  than  to  act  as  if  we  did  not  know  them  to  be 
there. 

After  all,  though,  you  will  say,  Why  such  an  ado 
about  a  matter  concerning  which,  however  we  may 
theoretically  differ,  we  all  practically  agree?  In  this 
age  of  toleration,  no  scientist  will  ever  try  actively  to 
interfere  with  our  religious  faith,  provided  we  enjoy 
it  quietly  with  our  friends  and  do  not  make  a  pub- 
lic nuisance  of  it  in  the  market-place.  But  it  is  just 
on  this  matter  of  the  market-place  that  I  think  the 
utility  of  such  essays  as  mine  may  turn.  If  reli- 


xii  Preface. 

gious  hypotheses  about  the  universe  be  in  order  at 
all,  then  the  active  faiths  of  individuals  in  them, 
freely  expressing  themselves  in  life,  are  the  experi- 
mental tests  bv^  which  they  are  verified,  and  the  only 
means  by  which  their  truth  or  falsehood  can  be 
wrought  out.  The  truest  scientific  hypothesis  is  that 
which,  as  we  say,  '  works '  best ;  and  it  can  be  no 
otherwise  with  religious  hypotheses.  Religious  his- 
tory proves  that  one  hypothesis  after  another  has 
worked  ill,  has  crumbled  at  contact  with  a  widening 
knowledge  of  the  world,  and  has  lapsed  from  the 
minds  of  men.  Some  articles  of  faith,  however, 
have  maintained  themselves  through  every  vicissi- 
tude, and  possess  even  more  vitality  to-day  than  ever 
before :  it  is  for  the  '  science  of  religions '  to  tell  us 
just  which  hypotheses  these  are.  Meanwhile  the  free- 
est  competition  of  the  various  faiths  with  one  another, 
and  their  openest  application  to  life  by  their  several 
champions,  are  the  most  favorable  conditions  under 
which  the  survival  of  the  fittest  can  proceed.  They 
ought  therefore  not  to  lie  hid  each  under  its  bushel, 
indulged-in  quietly  with  friends.  They  ought  to  live 
in  publicity,  vying  with  each  other ;  and  it  seems  to 
me  that  (the  regime  of  tolerance  once  granted,  and 
a  fair  field  shown)  the  scientist  has  nothing  to  fear  for 
his  own  interests  from  the  liveliest  possible  state  of 
fermentation  in  the  religious  world  of  his  time.  Those 
faiths  will  best  stand  the  test  which  adopt  also  his  hy- 
potheses, and  make  them  integral  elements  of  their 
own.  He  should  welcome  therefore  every  species  of 
religious  agitation  and  discussion,  so  long  as  he  is  will- 
ing to  allow  that  some  religious  hypothesis  may  be 


Preface.  xiii 

true.  Of  course  there  are  plenty  of  scientists  who  would 
deny  that  dogmatically,  maintaining  that  science  has 
already  ruled  all  possible  religious  hypotheses  out  of 
court.  Such  scientists  ought,  I  agree,  to  aim  at  im- 
posing privacy  on  religious  faiths,  the  public  mani- 
festation of  which  could  only  be  a  nuisance  in  their 
eyes.  With  all  such  scientists,  as  well  as  with  their 
allies  outside  of  science,  my  quarrel  openly  lies;  and 
I  hope  that  my  book  may  do  something  to  persuade 
the  reader  of  their  crudity,  and  range  him  on  my  side. 
Religious  fermentation  is  always  a  symptom  of  the  in- 
tellectual vigor  of  a  society ;  and  it  is  only  when  they 
forget  that  they  are  hypotheses  and  put  on  rational- 
istic and  authoritative  pretensions,  that  our  faiths  do 
harm.  The  most  interesting  and  valuable  things  about 
a  man  are  his  ideals  and  over-beliefs.  The  same  is 
true  of  nations  and  historic  epochs ;  and  the  excesses 
of  which  the  particular  individuals  and  epochs  are 
guilty  are  compensated  in  the  total,  and  become  pro- 
fitable to  mankind  in  the  long  run. 

The  essay  '  On  some  Hegelisms '  doubtless  needs 
an  apology  for  the  superficiality  with  which  it  treats  a 
serious  subject.  It  was  written  as  a  squib,  to  be  read 
in  a  college-seminary  in  Hegel's  logic,  several  of  whose 
members,  mature  men,  were  devout  champions  of  the 
dialectical  method.  My  blows  therefore  were  aimed 
almost  entirely  at  that.  I  reprint  the  paper  here  (albeit 
with  some  misgivings),  partly  because  I  believe  the 
dialectical  method  to  be  wholly  abominable  when 
worked  by  concepts  alone,  and  partly  because  the 
essay  casts  some  positive  light  on  the  pluralist-em- 
piricist point  of  view. 


xiv  Preface. 

The  paper  on  Psychical  Research  is  added  to  the 
volume  for  convenience  and  utility.  Attracted  to  this 
study  some  years  ago  by  my  love  of  sportsmanlike  fair 
play  in  science,  I  have  seen  enough  to  convince  me 
of  its  great  importance,  and  I  wish  to  gain  for  it  what 
interest  I  can.  The  American  Branch  of  the  Society 
is  in  need  of  more  support,  and  if  my  article  draws 
some  new  associates  thereto,  it  will  have  served  its 
turn. 

Apology  is  also  needed  for  the  repetition  of  the 
same  passage  in  two  essays  (pp.  59-61  and  96-7, 
100-1).  My  excuse  is  that  one  cannot  always  ex- 
press the  same  thought  in  two  ways  that  seem  equally 
forcible,  so  one  has  to  copy  one's  former  words. 

The  Crillon-quotation  on  page  62  is  due  to  Mr. 
W.  M.  Salter  (who  employed  it  in  a  similar  manner 
in  the  '  Index'  for  August  24,  1882),  and  the  dream- 
metaphor  on  p.  1 74  is  a  reminiscence  from  some  novel 
of  George  Sand's  —  I  forget  which  —  read  by  me  thirty 
years  ago. 

Finally,  the  revision  of  the  essays  has  consisted 
almost  entirely  in  excisions.  Probably  less  than  a 
page  and  a  half  in  all  of  new  matter  has  been  added. 

HARVARD  UNIVERSITY, 

CAMBRIDGE,  MASSACHUSETTS, 
December,  1896. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGH 

THE  WILL  TO  BELIEVE i 

Hypotheses  and  options,  i.  Pascal's  wager,  5.  Clifford's 
veto,  8.  Psychological  causes  of  belief,  9.  Thesis  of  the 
Essay,  n.  Empiricism  and  absolutism,  12.  Objective  certi- 
tude and  its  unattainability,  13.  Two  different  sorts  of  risks  in 
believing,  17.  Some  risk  unavoidable,  19.  Faith  may  bring 
forth  its  own  verification,  22.  Logical  conditions  of  religious 
belief,  25. 

Is  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING 32 

Temperamental  Optimism  and  Pessimism,  33.  How  reconcile 
with  life  one  bent  on  suicide  ?  38.  Religious  melancholy  and  its 
cure,  39.  Decay  of  Natural  Theology,  43.  Instinctive  antidotes 
to  pessimism,  46.  Religion  involves  belief  in  an  unseen  exten- 
sion of  the  world,  51.  Scientific  positivism,  52.  Doubt  actuates 
conduct  as  much  as  belief  does,  54.  To  deny  certain  faiths  is 
logically  absurd,  for  they  make  their  objects  true,  56.  Conclu- 
sion, 61. 

THE  SENTIMENT  OF  RATIONALITY 63 

Rationality  means  fluent  thinking,  63.  Simplification,  65. 
Clearness,  66.  Their  antagonism,  66.  Inadequacy  of  the  ab- 
stract, 68.  The  thought  of  nonentity,  71.  Mysticism,  74.  Pure 
theory  cannot  banish  wonder,  75.  The  passage  to  practice  may 
restore  the  feeling  of  rationality,  75.  Familiarity  and  expect- 
ancy, 76.  '  Substance,'  80.  A  rational  world  must  appear  con- 


xvi  Contents. 

gruous  with  our  powers,  82.  But  these  differ  from  man  to 
man,  88.  Faith  is  one  of  them,  90.  Inseparable  from  doubt,  95. 
May  verify  itself,  96.  Its  r&le  in  ethics,  98.  Optimism  and  pes- 
simism, 101.  Is  this  a  moral  universe  ?  —  what  does  the  problem 
mean  ?  103.  Anaesthesia  versus  energy,  107.  Active  assumption 
necessary,  107.  Conclusion,  no. 

REFLEX  ACTION  AND  THEISM in 

Prestige  of  Physiology,  112.  Plan  of  neural  action,  113.  God 
the  mind's  adequate  object,  116.  Contrast  between  world  as 
perceived  and  as  conceived,  118.  God,  120.  The  mind's  three 
departments,  123.  Science  due  to  a  subjective  demand,  129. 
Theism  a  mean  between  two  extremes,  134.  Gnosticism,  137. 
No  intellection  except  for  practical  ends,  140.  Conclusion,  142. 

THE  DILEMMA  OF  DETERMINISM 145 

Philosophies  seek  a  rational  world,  146.  Determinism  and 
Indeterminism  defined,  149.  Both  are  postulates  of  ration- 
ality, 152.  Objections  to  chance  considered,  153.  Determinism 
involves  pessimism,  159.  Escape  via  Subjectivism,  164.  Sub- 
jectivism leads  to  corruption,  170.  A  world  with  chance  in  it  is 
morally  the  less  irrational  alternative,  176.  Chance  not  incom- 
patible with  an  ultimate  Providence,  180. 

THE  MORAL  PHILOSOPHER  AND  THE  MORAL  LIFE  .  184 
The  moral  philosopher  postulates  a  unified  system,  185.  Ori- 
gin of  moral  judgments,  185.  Goods  and  ills  are  created  by 
judgments,  189.  Obligations  are  created  by  demands,  192.  The 
conflict  of  ideals,  198.  Its  solution,  205.  Impossibility  of  an 
abstract  system  of  Ethics,  208.  The  easy-going  and  the  strenu- 
ous mood,  211.  Connection  between  Ethics  and  Religion,  212. 

GREAT  MEN  AND  THEIR  ENVIRONMENT 216 

Solidarity  of  causes  in  the  world,  216.  The  human  mind  ab- 
stracts in  order  to  explain,  219.  Different  cycles  of  operation  in 
Nature,  220.  Darwin's  distinction  between  causes  that  produce 
and  causes  that  preserve  a  variation,  221.  Physiological  causes 
produce,  the  environment  only  adopts  or  preserves,  great  men, 
225.  When  adopted  they  become  social  ferments,  226.  Messrs. 


Contents.  xvii 

Spencer  and  Allen  criticised,  232.  Messrs.  Wallace  and  Cry- 
zanowski  quoted,  239.  The  laws  of  history,  244.  Mental  evo- 
lution, 245.  Analogy  between  original  ideas  and  Darwin's 
accidental  variations,  247.  Criticism  of  Spencer's  views,  251. 

THE  IMPORTANCE  OF  INDIVIDUALS 255 

Small  differences  may  be  important,  256.  Individual  differ- 
ences are  important  because  they  are  the  causes  of  social 
change,  259.  Hero-worship  justified,  261. 

ON  SOME  HEGELISMS 263 

The  world  appears  as  a  pluralism,  264.  Elements  of  unity  in 
the  pluralism,  268.  Hegel's  excessive  claims,  272.  He  makes  of 
negation  a  bond  of  union,  273.  The  principle  of  totality,  277. 
Monism  and  pluralism,  279.  The  fallacy  of  accident  in  Hegel, 
280.  The  good  and  the  bad  infinite,  284.  Negation,  286.  Con- 
clusion, 292.  —  Note  on  the  Anaesthetic  revelation,  294. 

WHAT  PSYCHICAL  RESEARCH  HAS  ACCOMPLISHED  .  .  299 
The  unclassified  residuum,  299.  The  Society  for  Psychical 
Research  and  its  history,  303.  Thought-transference,  308. 
Gurney's  work,  309.  The  census  of  hallucinations,  312.  Me- 
diumship,  313.  The  'subliminal  self,'  315.  'Science'  and  her 
counter-presumptions,  317.  The  scientific  character  of  Mr. 
Myers's  work,  320.  The  mechanical-impersonal  view  of  life 
•versus  the  personal-romantic  view,  324. 


INDEX 329 


ESSAYS 

IN 

POPULAR   PHILOSOPHY. 


THE  WILL  TO   BELIEVE.1 

IN  the  recently  published  Life  by  Leslie  Stephen  of 
his  brother,  Fitz-James,  there  is  an  account  of  a 
school  to  which  the  latter  went  when  he  was  a  boy. 
The  teacher,  a  certain  Mr.  Guest,  used  to  converse 
with  his  pupils  in  this  wise:  "  Gurney,  what  is  the 
difference  between  justification  and  sanctification?  — 
Stephen,  prove  the  omnipotence  of  God  !  "  etc.  In 
the  midst  of  our  Harvard  freethinking  and  indiffer- 
ence we  are  prone  to  imagine  that  here  at  your  good 
old  orthodox  College  conversation  continues  to  be 
somewhat  upon  this  order;  and  to  show  you  that 
we  at  Harvard  have  not  lost  all  interest  in  these  vital 
subjects,  I  have  brought  with  me  to-night  something 
like  a  sermon  on  justification  by  faith  to  read  to  you, 
—  I  mean  an  essay  in  justification  of  faith,  a  defence 
of  our  right  to  adopt  a  believing  attitude  in  religious 
matters,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  our  merely  logical 

1  An  Address  to  the  Philosophical  Clubs   of  Yale  and  Brown 
Universities.    Published  in  the  New  World,  June,  1896. 

I 


2  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

intellect  may  not  have  been  coerced.     '  The  Will  to 
Believe,'  accordingly,  is  the  title  of  my  paper. 

I  have  long  defended  to  my  own  students  the  law- 
fulness of  voluntarily  adopted  faith ;  but  as  soon  as 
they  have  got  well  imbued  with  the  logical  spirit, 
they  have  as  a  rule  refused  to  admit  my  contention 
to  be  lawful  philosophically,  even  though  in  point 
of  fact  they  were  personally  all  the  time  chock-full 
of  some  faith  or  other  themselves.  I  am  all  the 
while,  however,  so  profoundly  convinced  that  my 
own  position  is  correct,  that  your  invitation  has 
seemed  to  me  a  good  occasion  to  make  my  state- 
ments more  clear.  Perhaps  your  minds  will  be  more 
open  than  those  with  which  I  have  hitherto  had  to 
deal.  I  will  be  as  little  technical  as  I  can,  though 
I  must  begin  by  setting  up  some  technical  distinc- 
tions that  will  help  us  in  the  end. 

I. 

Let  us  give  the  name  of  hypothesis  to  anything  that 
may  be  proposed  to  our  belief;  and  just  as  the  elec- 
tricians speak  of  live  and  dead  wires,  let  us  speak  of 
any  hypothesis  as  either  live  or  dead.  A  live  hy- 
pothesis is  one  which  appeals  as  a  real  possibility  to 
him  to  whom  it  is  proposed.  If  I  ask  you  to  believe 
in  the  Mahdi,  the  notion  makes  no  electric  connec- 
tion with  your  nature,  —  it  refuses  to  scintillate  with 
any  credibility  at  all.  As  an  hypothesis  it  is  com-- 
pletely  dead.  To  an  Arab,  however  (even  if  he  be 
not  one  of  the  Mahdi's  followers),  the  hypothesis  is 
among  the  mind's  possibilities:  it  is  alive.  This 
shows  that  deadness  and  liveness  in  an  hypoth- 
esis are  not  intrinsic  properties,  but  relations  to  the 


The  Will  to  Believe.  3 

individual  thinker.  They  are  measured  by  his  will- 
ingness to  act.  The  maximum  of  liveness  in  an 
hypothesis  means  willingness  to  act  irrevocably. 
Practically,  that  means  belief;  but  there  is  some 
believing  tendency  wherever  there  is  willingness  to 
act  at  all. 

Next,  let  us  call  the  decision  between  two  hypoth- 
eses an  option.  Options  may  be  of  several  kinds. 
They  may  be  —  I,  living  or  dead ;  2,  forced  or  avoid- 
able ;  3,  momentous  or  trivial ;  and  for  our  purposes 
we  may  call  an  option  a  genuine  option  when  it  is 
of  the  forced,  living,  and  momentous  kind. 

1.  A  living  option  is  one  in  which  both  hypothe- 
ses are  live  ones.     If  I  say  to  you :  "  Be  a  theoso- 
phist  or  be  a  Mohammedan,"  it  is  probably  a  dead 
option,  because  for  you  neither  hypothesis  is  likely 
to  be  alive.     But  if  I  say :  "  Be  an  agnostic  or  be  a 
Christian,"  it  is  otherwise :  trained  as  you  are,  each 
hypothesis   makes  some  appeal,  however   small,  to 
your  belief. 

2.  Next,  if  I  say  to  you :   "  Choose  between  going 
out  with  your  umbrella  or  without  it,"  I  do  not  offer 
you  a  genuine  option,  for  it  is  not  forced.     You  can 
easily  avoid  it  by  not  going  out  at  all.     Similarly,  if 
I  say,  "  Either  love  me  or  hate  me,"  "  Either  call  my 
theory  true  or  call  it  false,"  your  option  is  avoidable. 
You  may  remain  indifferent  to  me,  neither  loving  nor 
hating,  and  you  may  decline  to  offer  any  judgment 
as  to  my  theory.     But  if  I  say,  "  Either  accept  this 
truth  or  go  without  it,"  I  put  on  you  a  forced  option, 
for  there  is  no  standing  place  outside  of  the  alterna- 
tive.     Every  dilemma  based  on  a  complete   logical 
disjunction,  with  no  possibility  of  not  choosing,   is 
an  option  of  this  forced  kind. 


4  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

3.  Finally,  if  I  were  Dr.  Nansen  and  proposed  to 
you  to  join  my  North  Pole  expedition,  your  option 
would  be  momentous ;  for  this  would  probably  be 
your  only  similar  opportunity,  and  your  choice  now 
would  either  exclude  you  from  the  North  Pole  sort 
of  immortality  altogether  or  put  at  least  the  chance 
of  it  into  your  hands.  He  who  refuses  to  embrace 
a  unique  opportunity  loses  the  prize  as  surely  as  if 
he  tried  and  failed.  Per  contra,  the  option  is  trivial 
when  the  opportunity  is  not  unique,  when  the  stake 
is  insignificant,  or  when  the  decision  is  reversible  if 
it  later  prove  unwise.  Such  trivial  options  abound 
in  the  scientific  life.  A  chemist  finds  an  hypothesis 
live  enough  to  spend  a  year  in  its  verification :  he 
believes  in  it  to  that  extent.  But  if  his  experiments 
prove  inconclusive  either  way,  he  is  quit  for  his  loss 
of  time,  no  vital  harm  being  done. 

It  will  facilitate  our  discussion  if  we  keep  all  these 
distinctions  well  in  mind. 


II. 

The  next  matter  to  consider  is  the  actual  psychol- 
ogy of  human  opinion.  When  we  look  at  certain 
facts,  it  seems  as  if  our  passional  and  volitional  na- 
ture lay  at  the  root  of  all  our  convictions.  When 
we  look  at  others,  it  seems  as  if  they  could  do  noth- 
ing when  the  intellect  had  once  said  its  say.  Let 
us  take  the  latter  facts  up  first. 

Does  it  not  seem  preposterous  on  the  very  face  of 
it  to  talk  of  our  opinions  being  modifiable  at  will? 
Can  our  will  either  help  or  hinder  our  intellect  in 
its  perceptions  of  truth?  Can  we,  by  just  willing  it, 
believe  that  Abraham  Lincoln's  existence  is  a  myth, 


The  Will  to  Believe.  5 

and  that  the  portraits  of  him  in  McClure's  Maga- 
zine are  all  of  some  one  else  ?  Can  we,  by  any  effort 
of  our  will,  or  by  any  strength  of  wish  that  it  were 
true,  believe  ourselves  well  and  about  when  we  are 
roaring  with  rheumatism  in  bed,  or  feel  certain  that 
the  sum  of  the  two  one-dollar  bills  in  our  pocket 
must  be  a  hundred  dollars?  We  can  say  any  of 
these  things,  but  we  are  absolutely  impotent  to  be- 
lieve them ;  and  of  just  such  things  is  the  whole 
fabric  of  the  truths  that  we  do  believe  in  made  up, 
—  matters  of  fact,  immediate  or  remote,  as  Hume 
said,  and  relations  between  ideas,  which  are  either 
there  or  not  there  for  us  if  we  see  them  so,  and 
which  if  not  there  cannot  be  put  there  by  any  action 
of  our  own. 

In  Pascal's  Thoughts  there  is  a  celebrated  passage 
known  in  literature  as  Pascal's  wager.  In  it  he  tries 
to  force  us  into  Christianity  by  reasoning  as  if  our 
concern  with  truth  resembled  our  concern  with  the 
stakes  in  a  game  of  chance.  Translated  freely  his 
words  are  these :  You  must  either  believe  or  not  be- 
lieve that  God  is  —  which  will  you  do?  Your  human 
reason  cannot  say.  A  game  is  going  on  between  you 
and  the  nature  of  things  which  at  the  day  of  judg- 
ment will  bring  out  either  heads  or  tails.  Weigh 
what  your  gains  and  your  losses  would  be  if  you 
should  stake  all  you  have  on  heads,  or  God's  exist- 
ence:  if  you  win  in  such  case,  you  gain  eternal  beati- 
tude ;  if  you  lose,  you  lose  nothing  at  all.  If  there 
were  an  infinity  of  chances,  and  only  one  for  God  in 
this  wager,  still  you  ought  to  stake  your  all  on  God ; 
for  though  you  surely  risk  a  finite  loss  by  this  pro- 
cedure, any  finite  loss  is  reasonable,  even  a  certain 
one  is  reasonable,  if  there  is  but  the  possibility  of 


6  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

infinite  gain.  Go,  then,  and  take  holy  water,  and 
have  masses  said ;  belief  will  come  and  stupefy  your 
scruples,  —  Cela  vousfera  croire  et  vous  abttira.  Why 
should  you  not?  At  bottom,  what  have  you  to  lose? 
You  probably  feel  that  when  religious  faith  ex- 
presses itself  thus,  in  the  language  of  the  gaming- 
table, it  is  put  to  its  last  trumps.  Surely  Pascal's 
own  personal  belief  in  masses  and  holy  water  had  far 
other  springs ;  and  this  celebrated  page  of  his  is  but 
an  argument  for  others,  a  last  desperate  snatch  at  a 
weapon  against  the  hardness  of  the  unbelieving  heart. 
We  feel  that  a  faith  in  masses  and  holy  water  adopted 
wilfully  after  such  a  mechanical  calculation  would 
lack  the  inner  soul  of  faith's  reality;  and  if  we  were 
ourselves  in  the  place  of  the  Deity,  we  should  prob- 
ably take  particular  pleasure  in  cutting  off  believers 
of  this  pattern  from  their  infinite  reward.  It  is  evi- 
dent that  unless  there  be  some  pre-existing  tendency 
to  believe  in  masses  and  holy  water,  the  option 
offered  to  the  will  by  Pascal  is  not  a  living  option. 
Certainly  no  Turk  ever  took  to  masses  and  holy  wa- 
ter on  its  account;  and  even  to  us  Protestants  these 
means  of  salvation  seem  such  foregone  impossibili- 
ties that  Pascal's  logic,  invoked  for  them  specifically, 
leaves  us  unmoved.  As  well  might  the  Mahdi  write 
to  us,  saying,  "I  am  the  Expected  One  whom  God 
has  created  in  his  effulgence.  You  shall  be  infinitely 
happy  if  you  confess  me ;  otherwise  you  shall  be  cut 
off  from  the  light  of  the  sun.  Weigh,  then,  your 
infinite  gain  if  I  am  genuine  against  your  finite  sacri- 
fice if  I  am  not !  "  His  logic  would  be  that  of  Pascal ; 
but  he  would  vainly  use  it  on  us,  for  the  hypothesis 
he  offers  us  is  dead.  No  tendency  to  act  on  it  exists 
in  us  to  any  degree. 


The  Will  to  Believe.  7 

The  talk  of  believing  by  our  volition  seems,  then, 
from  one  point  of  view,  simply  silly.  From  another 
point  of  view  it  is  worse  than  silly,  it  is  vile.  When 
one  turns  to  the  magnificent  edifice  of  the  physical 
sciences,  and  sees  how  it  was  reared ;  what  thousands 
of  disinterested  moral  lives  of  men  lie  buried  in  its 
mere  foundations ;  what  patience  and  postponement, 
what  choking  down  of  preference,  what  submission  to 
the  icy  laws  of  outer  fact  are  wrought  into  its  very 
stones  and  mortar;  how  absolutely  impersonal  it 
stands  in  its  vast  augustness, —  then  how  besotted 
and  contemptible  seems  every  little  sentimentalist 
who  comes  blowing  his  voluntary  smoke-wreaths, 
and  pretending  to  decide  things  from  out  of  his 
private  dream !  Can  we  wonder  if  those  bred  in 
the  rugged  and  manly  school  of  science  should  feel 
like  spewing  such  subjectivism  out  of  their  mouths? 
The  whole  system  of  loyalties  which  grow  up  in  the 
schools  of  science  go  dead  against  its  toleration ;  so 
that  it  is  only  natural  that  those  who  have  caught 
the  scientific  fever  should  pass  over  to  the  opposite 
extreme,  and  write  sometimes  as  if  the  incorruptibly 
truthful  intellect  ought  positively  to  prefer  bitterness 
and  unacceptableness  to  the  heart  in  its  cup. 

It  fortifies  my  soul  to  know 

That,  though  I  perish,  Truth  is  so  — 

sings  Clough,  while  Huxley  exclaims :  "  My  only 
consolation  lies  in  the  reflection  that,  however  bad 
our  posterity  may  become,  so  far  as  they  hold  by  the 
plain  rule  of  not  pretending  to  believe  what  they  have 
no  reason  to  believe,  because  it  may  be  to  their  ad- 
vantage so  to  pretend  [the  word  '  pretend '  is  surely 
here  redundant],  they  will  not  have  reached  the  low- 


8  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

est  depth  of  immorality."  And  that  delicious  enfant 
terrible  Clifford  writes :  "  Belief  is  desecrated  when 
given  to  unproved  and  unquestioned  statements  for 
the  solace  and  private  pleasure  of  the  believer.  .  .  . 
Whoso  would  deserve  well  of  his  fellows  in  this  mat- 
ter will  guard  the  purity  of  his  belief  with  a  very 
fanaticism  of  jealous  care,  lest  at  any  time  it  should 
rest  on  an  unworthy  object,  and  catch  a  stain  which 
can  never  be  wiped  away.  ...  If  [a]  belief  has  been 
accepted  on  insufficient  evidence  [even  though  the 
belief  be  true,  as  Clifford  on  the  same  page  explains] 
the  pleasure  is  a  stolen  one.  ...  It  is  sinful  because 
it  is  stolen  in  defiance  of  our  duty  to  mankind.  That 
duty  is  to  guard  ourselves  from  such  beliefs  as  from  a 
pestilence  which  may  shortly  master  our  own  body 
and  then  spread  to  the  rest  of  the  town.  ...  It  is 
wrong  always,  everywhere,  and  for  every  one,  to 
believe  anything  upon  insufficient  evidence." 

III. 

All  this  strikes  one  as  healthy,  even  when  ex- 
pressed, as  by  Clifford,  with  somewhat  too  much  of 
robustious  pathos  in  the  voice.  Free-will  and  simple 
wishing  do  seem,  in  the  matter  of  our  credences,  to 
be  only  fifth  wheels  to  the  coach.  Yet  if  any  one 
should  thereupon  assume  that  intellectual  insight  is 
what  remains  after  wish  and  will  and  sentimental 
preference  have  taken  wing,  or  that  pure  reason  is 
What  then  settles  our  opinions,  he  would  fly  quite 
as  directly  in  the  teeth  of  the  facts. 

It  is  only  our  already  dead  hypotheses  that  our 
willing  nature  is  unable  to  bring  to  life  again  But 
what  has  made  them  dead  for  us  is  for  the  most  part 


The  Will  to  Believe.  9 

a  previous  action  of  our  willing  nature  of  an  antag- 
onistic kind.  When  I  say  '  willing  nature,'  I  do  not 
mean  only  such  deliberate  volitions  as  may  have  set 
up  habits  of  belief  that  we  cannot  now  escape  from,  — 
I  mean  all  such  factors  of  belief  as  fear  and  hope, 
prejudice  and  passion,  imitation  and  partisanship, 
the  circumpressure  of  our  caste  and  set.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact  we  find  ourselves  believing,  we  hardly 
know  how  or  why.  Mr.  Balfour  gives  the  name  of 
'  authority  '  to  all  those  influences,  born  of  the  intel- 
lectual climate,  that  make  hypotheses  possible  or 
impossible  for  us,  alive  or  dead.  Here  in  this  room, 
we  all  of  us  believe  in  molecules  and  the  conserva- 
tion of  energy,  in  democracy  and  necessary  progress, 
in  Protestant  Christianity  and  the  duty  of  fighting  for 
'  the  doctrine  of  the  immortal  Monroe,'  all  for  no  rea- 
sons worthy  of  the  name.  We  see  into  these  mat- 
ters with  no  more  inner  clearness,  and  probably  with 
much  less,  than  any  disbeliever  in  them  might  pos- 
sess. His  unconventionality  would  probably  have 
some  grounds  to  show  for  its  conclusions ;  but  for 
us,  not  insight,  but  the  prestige  of  the  opinions,  is 
what  makes  the  spark  shoot  from  them  and  light  up 
our  sleeping  magazines  of  faith.  Our  reason  is  quite 
satisfied,  in  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  cases  out  of 
every  thousand  of  us,  if  it  can  find  a  few  arguments 
that  will  do  to  recite  in  case  our  credulity  is  criticised 
by  some  one  else.  Our  faith  is  faith  in  some  one  else's 
faith,  and  in  the  greatest  matters  this  is  most  the  case. 
Our  belief  in  truth  itself,  for  instance,  that  there  is  a 
truth,  and  that  our  minds  and  it  are  made  for  each 
other,  —  what  is  it  but  a  passionate  affirmation  of 
desire,  in  which  our  social  system  backs  us  up  ?  We 
want  to  have  a  truth;  we  want  to  believe  that  our 


io  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

experiments  and  studies  and  discussions  must  put  us 
in  a  continually  better  and  better  position  towards  it ; 
and  on  this  line  we  agree  to  fight  out  our  thinking 
lives.  But  if  a  pyrrhonistic  sceptic  asks  us  how  we 
know  all  this,  can  our  logic  find  a  reply  ?  No !  cer- 
tainly it  cannot.  It  is  just  one  volition  against  an- 
other, —  we  willing  to  go  in  for  life  upon  a  trust  or 
assumption  which  he,  for  his  part,  does  not  care  to 
make.1 

As  a  rule  we  disbelieve  all  facts  and  theories  for 
which  we  have  no  use.  Clifford's  cosmic  emotions 
find  no  use  for  Christian  feelings.  Huxley  belabors 
the  bishops  because  there  is  no  use  for  sacerdotal- 
ism in  his  scheme  of  life.  Newman,  on  the  contrary, 
goes  over  to  Romanism,  and  finds  all  sorts  of  reasons 
good  for  staying  there,  because  a  priestly  system  is 
for  him  an  organic  need  and  delight.  Why  do  so  few 
'  scientists '  even  look  at  the  evidence  for  telepathy, 
so  called  ?  Because  they  think,  as  a  leading  biologist, 
now  dead,  once  said  to  me,  that  even  if  such  a  thing 
were  true,  scientists  ought  to  band  together  to  keep 
it  suppressed  and  concealed.  It  would  undo  the 
uniformity  of  Nature  and  all  sorts  of  other  things 
without  which  scientists  cannot  carry  on  their  pur- 
suits. But  if  this  very  man  had  been  shown  some- 
thing which  as  a  scientist  he  might  do  with  telepathy, 
he  might  not  only  have  examined  the  evidence,  but 
even  have  found  it  good  enough.  This  very  law  which 
the  logicians  would  impose  upon  us  —  if  I  may  give 
the  name  of  logicians  to  those  who  would  rule  out 
our  willing  nature  here  —  is  based  on  nothing  but 
their  own  natural  wish  to  exclude  all  elements  for 

1  Compare  the  admirable  page  310  in  S.  H.  Hodgson's  "  Time  and 
Space,"  London,  1865. 


The  Will  to  Believe.  11 

which  they,  in  their  professional  quality  of  logicians, 
can  find  no  use. 

Evidently,  then,  our  non-intellectual  nature  does 
influence  our  convictions.  There  are  passional  ten- 
dencies and  volitions  which  run  before  and  others 
which  come  after  belief,  and  it  is  only  the  latter  that 
are  too  late  for  the  fair ;  and  they  are  not  too  late 
when  the  previous  passional  work  has  been  already 
in  their  own  direction.  Pascal's  argument,  instead 
of  being  powerless,  then  seems  a  regular  clincher, 
and  is  the  last  stroke  needed  to  make  our  faith  in 
masses  and  holy  water  complete.  The  state  of  things 
is  evidently  far  from  simple ;  and  pure  insight  and 
logic,  whatever  they  might  do  ideally,  are  not  the 
only  things  that  really  do  produce  our  creeds. 

IV. 

Our  next  duty,  having  recognized  this  mixed-up 
state  of  affairs,  is  to  ask  whether  it  be  simply  repre- 
hensible and  pathological,  or  whether,  on  the  contrary, 
we  must  treat  it  as  a  normal  element  in  making  up 
our  minds.  The  thesis  I  defend  is,  briefly  stated, 
this :  Our  passional  nature  not  only  lawfully  may, 
but  must,  decide  an  option  between  propositions,  when- 
ever it  is  a  genuiue  option  that  cannot  by  its  nature  be 
decided  on  intellectual  grounds  ;  for  to  say,  under  such 
circumstances,  "  Do  not  decide,  but  leave  the  question 
open"  is  itself  a  passional  decision, — just  like  decid- 
ing yes  or  no,  —  and  is  attended  with  the  same  risk 
of  losing  the  truth.  The  thesis  thus  abstractly  ex- 
pressed will,  I  trust,  soon  become  quite  clear.  But 
I  must  first  indulge  in  a  bit  more  of  preliminary 
work. 


12  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 


V. 

It  will  be  observed  that  for  the  purposes  of  this 
discussion  we  are  on  'dogmatic  '  ground,  —  ground,  I 
mean,  which  leaves  systematic  philosophical  scepti- 
cism altogether  out  of  account.  The  postulate  that 
there  is  truth,  and  that  It  is  the  destiny  of  our  minds 
to  attain  it,  we  are  deliberately  resolving  to  make, 
though  the  sceptic  will  not  make  it.  We  part  com- 
pany with  him,  therefore,  absolutely,  at  this  point. 
But  the  faith  that  truth  exists,  and  that  our  minds 
can  find  it,  may  be  held  in  two  ways.  We  may  talk 
of  the  empiricist  way  and  of  the  absolutist  way  of  be- 
lieving in  truth.  The  absolutists  in  this  matter  say 
that  we  not  only  can  attain  to  knowing  truth,  but  we 
can  know  when  we  have  attained  to  knowing  it; 
while  the  empiricists  think  that  although  we  may 
attain  it,  we  cannot  infallibly  know  when.  To  know 
is  one  thing,  and  to  know  for  certain  that  we  know  is 
another.  One  may  hold  to  the  first  being  possible 
without  the  second ;  hence  the  empiricists  and  the 
absolutists,  although  neither  of  them  is  a  sceptic  in 
the  usual  philosophic  sense  of  the  term,  show  very 
different  degrees  of  dogmatism  in  their  lives. 

If  we  look  at  the  history  of  opinions,  we  see  that 
the  empiricist  tendency  has  largely  prevailed  in 
science,  while  in  philosophy  the  absolutist  tendency 
has  had  everything  its  own  way.  The  characteristic 
sort  of  happiness,  indeed,  which  philosophies  yield  has 
mainly  consisted  in  the  conviction  felt  by  each  suc- 
cessive school  or  system  that  by  it  bottom-certitude 
had  been  attained.  "  Other  philosophies  are  col- 
lections of  opinions,  mostly  false;  my  philosophy 


The  Will  to  Believe.  13 

gives  standing-ground  forever,"  —  who  does  not  rec- 
ognize in  this  the  key-note  of  every  system  worthy 
of  the  name?  A  system,  to  be  a  system  at  all,  must 
come  as  a  closed  system,  reversible  in  this  or  that 
detail,  perchance,  but  in  its  essential  features  never ! 

Scholastic  orthodoxy,  to  which  one  must  always 
go  when  one  wishes  to  find  perfectly  clear  statement, 
has  beautifully 'elaborated  this  absolutist  conviction 
in  a  doctrine  which  it  calls  that  of  '  objective  evi- 
dence.' If,  for  example,  I  am  unable  to  doubt  that 
I  now  exist  before  you,  that  two  is  less  than  three,  or 
that  if  all  men  are  mortal  then  I  am  mortal  too, 
it  is  because  these  things  illumine  my  intellect  irre- 
sistibly. The  final  ground  of  this  objective  evidence 
possessed  by  certain  propositions  is  the  ad&quatio 
intellects  nostri  cum  r$.  The  certitude  it  brings  in- 
volves an  aptitudinem  ad  extorquendum  certum  assen- 
sum  on  the  part  of  the  truth  envisaged,  and  on  the 
side  of  the  subject  a  quietem  in  cognitione,  when  once 
the  object  is  mentally  received,  that  leaves  no  possi- 
bility of  doubt  behind ;  and  in  the  whole  transaction 
nothing  operates  but  the  entitas  ipsa  of  the  object 
and  the  entitas  ipsa  of  the  mind.  We  slouchy  mod- 
ern thinkers  dislike  to  talk  in  Latin,  —  indeed,  we  dis- 
like to  talk  in  set  terms  at  all ;  but  at  bottom  our  own 
state  of  mind  is  very  much  like  this  whenever  we 
uncritically  abandon  ourselves:  You  believe  in  ob- 
jective evidence,  and  I  do.  Of  some  things  we  feel 
that  we  are  certain :  we  know,  and  we  know  that  we 
do  know.  There  is  something  that  gives  a  click'  in- 
side of  us,  a  bell  that  strikes  twelve,  when  the  hands 
of  our  mental  clock  have  swept  the  dial  and  meet 
over  the  meridian  hour.  The  greatest  empiricists 
among  us  are  only  empiricists  on  reflection:  when 


14  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

left  to  their  instincts,  they  dogmatize  like  infallible 
popes.  When  the  Cliffords  tell  us  how  sinful  it  is  to 
be  Christians  on  such  '  insufficient  evidence/  insuffi- 
ciency is  really  the  last  thing  they  have  in  mind. 
For  them  the  evidence  is  absolutely  sufficient,  only 
it  makes  the  other  way.  They  believe  so  completely 
in  an  anti-christian  order  of  the  universe  that  there 
is  no  living  option :  Christianity  is  a  dead  hypothe- 
sis from  the  start. 

VI. 

But  now,  since  we  are  all  such  absolutists  by  in- 
stinct, what  in  our  quality  of  students  of  philosophy 
ought  we  to  do  about  the  fact?  Shall  we  espouse 
and  indorse  it?  Or  shall  we  treat  it  as  a  weakness 
of  our  nature  from  which  we  must  free  ourselves,  if 
we  can? 

I  sincerely  believe  that  the  latter  course  is  the  only 
one  we  can  follow  as  reflective  men.  Objective  evi- 
dence and  certitude  are  doubtless  very  fine  ideals  to 
play  with,  but  where  on  this  moonlit  and  dream- 
visited  planet  are  they  found?  I  am,  therefore, 
myself  a  complete  empiricist  so  far  as  my  theory  of 
human  knowledge  goes.  I  live,  to  be  sure,  by  the 
practical  faith  that  we  must  go  on  experiencing  and 
thinking  over  our  experience,  for  only  thus  can  our 
opinions  grow  more  true;  but  to  hold  any  one  of 
them  —  I  absolutely  do  not  care  which  —  as  if  it  never 
could  be  reinterpretable  or  corrigible,  I  believe  to  be 
a  tremendously  mistaken  attitude,  and  I  think  that  the 
whole  history  of  philosophy  will  bear  me  out.  There 
is  but  one  indefectibly  certain  truth,  and  that  is  the 
truth  that  pyrrhonistic  scepticism  itself  leaves  stand- 


The  Will  to  Believe.  15 

ing,  —  the  truth  that  the  present  phenomenon  of 
consciousness  exists.  That,  however,  is  the  bare 
starting-point  of  knowledge,  the  mere  admission  of 
a  stuff  to  be  philosophized  about.  The  various  phi- 
losophies are  but  so  many  attempts  at  expressing 
what  this  stuff  really  is.  And  if  we  repair  to  our 
libraries  what  disagreement  do  we  discover !  Where 
is  a  certainly  true  answer  found?  Apart  from  ab- 
stract propositions  of  comparison  (such  as  two  and 
two  are  the  same  as  four),  propositions  which  tell 
us  nothing  by  themselves  about  concrete  reality,  we 
find  no  proposition  ever  regarded  by  any  one  as  evi- 
dently certain  that  has  not  either  been  called  a  false- 
hood, or  at  least  had  its  truth  sincerely  questioned 
by  some  one  else.  The  transcending  of  the  axioms 
of  geometry,  not  in  play  but  in  earnest,  by  certain 
of  our  contemporaries  (as  Zollner  and  Charles  H. 
Hinton),  and  the  rejection  of  the  whole  Aristotelian 
logic  by  the  Hegelians,  are  striking  instances  in 
point. 

No  concrete  test  of  what  is  really  true  has  ever 
been  agreed  upon.  Some  make  the  criterion  exter- 
nal to  the  moment  of  perception,  putting  it  either 
in  revelation,  the  consensus  gentium,  the  instincts  of 
the  heart,  or  the  systematized  experience  of  the  race. 
Others  make  the  perceptive  moment  its  own  test,  — 
Descartes,  for  instance,  with  his  clear  and  distinct 
ideas  guaranteed  by  the  veracity  of  God ;  Reid  with 
his  '  common-sense ;  '  and  Kant  with  his  forms  of 
synthetic  judgment  a  priori.  The  inconceivability 
of  the  opposite  ;  the  capacity  to  be  verified  by  sense ; 
the  possession  of  complete  organic  unity  or  self-rela- 
tion, realized  when  a  thing  is  its  own  other,  —  are 
standards  which,  in  turn,  have  been  used.  The  much 


1 6  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

lauded  objective  evidence  is  never  triumphantly  there-, 
it  is  a  mere  aspiration  or  Grenzbegriff,  marking  the 
infinitely  remote  ideal  of  our  thinking  life.  To  claim 
that  certain  truths  now  possess  it,  is  simply  to  say 
that  when  you  think  them  true  and  they  are  true, 
then  their  evidence  is  objective,  otherwise  it  is  not. 
But  practically  one's  conviction  that  the  evidence 
one  goes  by  is  of  the  real  objective  brand,  is  only 
one  more  subjective  opinion  added  to  the  lot.  For 
what  a  contradictory  array  of  opinions  have  objec- 
tive evidence  and  absolute  certitude  been  claimed ! 
The  world  is  rational  through  and  through,  —  its  ex- 
istence is  an  ultimate  brute  fact;  there  is  a  perso- 
nal God,  —  a  personal  God  is  inconceivable ;  there 
is  an  extra-mental  physical  world  immediately  known, 
—  the  mind  can  only  know  its  own  ideas ;  a  moral  im- 
perative exists,  —  obligation  is  only  the  resultant  of 
desires;  a  permanent  spiritual  principle  is  in  every 
one, — there  are  only  shifting  states  of  mind;  there 
is  an  endless  chain  of  causes,  —  there  is  an  absolute 
first  cause ;  an  eternal  necessity,  —  a  freedom ;  a 
purpose,  —  no  purpose;  a  primal  One,  —  a  primal 
Many ;  a  universal  continuity,  —  an  essential  discon- 
tinuity in  things ;  an  infinity,  —  no  infinity.  There  is 
this,  —  there  is  that;  there  is  indeed  nothing  which 
some  one  has  not  thought  absolutely  true,  while  his 
neighbor  deemed  it  absolutely  false;  and  not  an 
absolutist  among  them  seems  ever  to  have  consid- 
ered that  the  trouble  may  all  the  time  be  essential 
and  that  the  intellect,  even  with  truth  directly  in  its 
grasp,  may  have  no  infallible  signal  for  knowing 
whether  it  be  truth  or  no.  When,  indeed,  one  re- 
members that  the  most  striking  practical  application 
to  life  of  the  doctrine  of  objective  certitude  has  been 


The  Will  to  Believe.  17 

the  conscientious  labors  of  the  Holy  Office  of  the 
Inquisition,  one  feels  less  tempted  than  ever  to  lend 
the  doctrine  a  respectful  ear. 

But  please  observe,  now,  that  when  as  empiricists 
we  give  up  the  doctrine  of  objective  certitude,  we  do 
not  thereby  give  up  the  quest  or  hope  of  truth  itself. 
We  still  pin  our  faith  on  its  existence,  and  still  believe 
that  we  gain  an  ever  better  position  towards  it  by 
systematically  continuing  to  roll  up  experiences  and 
think.  Our  great  difference  from  the  scholastic  lies  in 
the  way  we  face.  The  strength  of  his  system  lies  in 
the  principles,  the  origin,  the  terminus  a  quo  of  his 
thought;  for  us  the  strength  is  in  the  outcome,  the 
upshot,  the  terminus  ad  quern.  Not  where  it  comes 
from  but  what  it  leads  to  is  to  decide.  It  matters  not 
to  an  empiricist  from  what  quarter  an  hypothesis  may 
come  to  him :  he  may  have  acquired  it  by  fair  means 
or  by  foul ;  passion  may  have  whispered  or  accident 
suggested  it ;  but  if  the  total  drift  of  thinking  con- 
tinues to  confirm  it,  that  is  what  he  means  by  its 
being  true. 

VII. 

One  more  point,  small  but  important,  and  our  pre- 
liminaries are  done.  There  are  two  ways  of  looking 
at  our  duty  in  the  matter  of  opinion,  —  ways  entirely 
different,  and  yet  ways  about  whose  difference  the 
theory  of  knowledge  seems  hitherto  to  have  shown 
very  little  concern.  We  must  know  the  truth;  and 
we  must  avoid  error,  —  these  are  our  first  and  great 
commandments  as  would-be  knowers ;  but  they  are 
not  two  ways  of  stating  an  identical  commandment, 
they  are  two  separable  laws.  Although  it  may  indeed 
happen  that  when  we  believe  the  truth  A,  we  escape 


1 8  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

as  an  incidental  consequence  from  believing  the  false- 
hood B,  it  hardly  ever  happens  that  by  merely  dis- 
believing B  we  necessarily  believe  A.  We  may  in 
escaping  B  fall  into  believing  other  falsehoods,  C  or 
D,  just  as  bad  as  B ;  or  we  may  escape  B  by  not 
believing  anything  at  all,  not  even  A. 

Believe  truth  !  Shun  error  !  —  these,  we  see,  are 
two  materially  different  laws;  and  by  choosing  be- 
tween them  we  may  end  by  coloring  differently  our 
whole  intellectual  life.  We  may  regard  the  chase 
for  truth  as  paramount,  and  the  avoidance  of  error  as 
secondary ;  or  we  may,  on  the  other  hand,  treat  the 
avoidance  of  error  as  more  imperative,  and  let  truth 
take  its  chance.  Clifford,  in  the  instructive  passage 
which  I  have  quoted,  exhorts  us  to  the  latter  course. 
Believe  nothing,  he  tells  us,  keep  your  mind  in  sus- 
pense forever,  rather  than  by  closing  it  on  insufficient 
evidence  incur  the  awful  risk  of  believing  lies.  You, 
on  the  other  hand,  may  think  that  the  risk  of  being  in 
error  is  a  very  small  matter  when  compared  with  the 
blessings  of  real  knowledge,  and  be  ready  to  be  duped 
many  times  in  your  investigation  rather  than  post- 
pone indefinitely  the  chance  of  guessing  true.  I 
myself  find  it  impossible  to  go  with  Clifford.  We 
must  remember  that  these  feelings  of  our  duty  about 
either  truth  or  error  are  in  any  case  only  expressions 
of  our  passional  life.  Biologically  considered,  our 
minds  are  as  ready  to  grind  out  falsehood  as  veracity, 
and  he  who  says,  "  Better  go  without  belief  forever 
than  believe  a  lie !  "  merely  shows  his  own  prepon- 
derant private  horror  of  becoming  a  dupe.  He  may 
be  critical  of  many  of  his  desires  and  fears,  but  this 
fear  he  slavishly  obeys.  He  cannot  imagine  any  one 
questioning  its  binding  force.  For  my  own  part,  J 


The  Will  to  Believe.  19 

have  also  a  horror  of  being  duped ;  but  I  can  believe 
that  worse  things  than  being  duped  may  happen  to  a 
man  in  this  world  :  so  Clifford's  exhortation  has  to  my 
ears  a  thoroughly  fantastic  sound.  It  is  like  a  gen- 
eral informing  his  soldiers  that  it  is  better  to  keep  out 
of  battle  forever  than  to  risk  a  single  wound.  Not 
so  are  victories  either  over  enemies  or  over  nature 
gained.  Our  errors  are  surely  not  such  awfully  sol- 
emn things.  In  a  world  where  we  are  so  certain  to 
incur  them  in  spite  of  all  our  caution,  a  certain  light- 
ness of  heart  seems  healthier  than  this  excessive  ner- 
vousness on  their  behalf.  At  any  rate,  it  seems  the 
fittest  thing  for  the  empiricist  philosopher. 

VIII. 

And  now,  after  all  this  introduction,  let  us  go  straight 
at  our  question.  I  have  said,  and  now  repeat  it,  that 
not  only  as  a  matter  of  fact  do  we  find  our  passional 
nature  influencing  us  in  our  opinions,  but  that  there 
are  some  options  between  opinions  in  which  this 
influence  must  be  regarded  both  as  an  inevitable  and 
as  a  lawful  determinant  of  our  choice. 

I  iear  here  that  some  of  you  my  hearers  will  begin 
to  scent  danger,  and  lend  an  inhospitable  ear.  Two 
first  steps  of  passion  you  have  indeed  had  to  admit  as 
necessary,  —  we  must  think  so  as  to  avoid  dupery, 
and  we  must  think  so  as  to  gain  truth ;  but  the  surest 
path  to  those  ideal  consummations,  you  will  probably 
consider,  is  from  now  onwards  to  take  no  further  pas- 
sional step. 

Well,  of  course,  I  agree  as  far  as  the  facts  will 
allow.  Wherever  the  option  between  losing  truth 
and  gaining  it  is  not  momentous,  we  can  throw  the 


2O  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

chance  of  gaining  truth  away,  and  at  any  rate  save 
ourselves  from  any  chance  of  believing  falsehood,  by 
not  making  up  our  minds  at  all  till  objective  evidence 
has  come.  In  scientific  questions,  this  is  almost  always 
the  case ;  and  even  in  human  affairs  in  general,  the 
need  of  acting  is  seldom  so  urgent  that  a  false  belief 
to  act  on  is  better  than  no  belief  at  all.  Law  courts, 
indeed,  have  to  decide  on  the  best  evidence  attainable 
for  the  moment,  because  a  judge's  duty  is  tc  make 
law  as  well  as  to  ascertain  it,  and  (as  a  learned  judge 
once  said  to  me)  few  cases  are  worth  spending  much 
time  over:  the  great  thing  is  to  have  them  decided 
on  any  acceptable  principle,  and  got  out  of  the  way. 
But  in  our  dealings  with  objective  nature  we  obviously 
are  recorders,  not  makers,  of  the  truth ;  and  decisions 
for  the  mere  sake  of  deciding  promptly  and  getting 
on  to  the  next  business  would  be  wholly  out  of  place. 
Throughout  the  breadth  of  physical  nature  facts  are 
what  they  are  quite  independently  of  us,  and  seldom 
is  there  any  such  hurry  about  them  that  the  risks  of 
being  duped  by  believing  a  premature  theory  need  be 
faced.  The  questions  here  are  always  trivial  options, 
the  hypotheses  are  hardly  living  (at  any  rate  not 
living  for  us  spectators),  the  choice  between  believing 
truth  or  falsehood  is  seldom  forced.  The  attitude  of 
sceptical  balance  is  therefore  the  absolutely  wise  one 
if  we  would  escape  mistakes.  What  difference,  indeed, 
does  it  make  to  most  of  us  whether  we  have  or  have 
not  a  theory  of  the  Rontgen  rays,  whether  we  believe 
or  not  in  mind-stuff,  or  have  a  conviction  about  the 
causality  of  conscious  states?  It  makes  no  difference. 
Such  options  are  not  forced  on  us.  On  every  account 
it  is  better  not  to  make  them,  but  still  keep  weighing 
reasons  pro  et  contra  with  an  indifferent  hand. 


The  Will  to  Believe.  21 

I  speak,  of  course,  here  of  the  purely  judging  mind 
For  purposes  of  discovery  such  indifference  is  to  be 
less  highly  recommended,  and  science  would  be  far 
less  advanced  than  she  is  if  the  passionate  desires  of 
individuals  to  get  their  own  faiths  confirmed  had  been 
kept  out  of  the  game.  See  for  example  the  sagacity 
which  Spencer  and  Weismann  now  display.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  you  want  an  absolute  duffer  in  an  inves- 
tigation, you  must,  after  all,  take  the  man  who  has  no 
interest  whatever  in  its  results:  he  is  the  warranted 
incapable,  the  positive  fool.  The  most  useful  investi- 
gator, because  the  most  sensitive  observer,  is  always 
he  whose  eager  interest  in  one  side  of  the  question  is 
balanced  by  an  equally  keen  nervousness  lest  he  be- 
come deceived.1  Science  has  organized  this  nervous- 
ness into  a  regular  technique,  her  so-called  method  of 
verification ;  and  she  has  fallen  so  deeply  in  love  with 
the  method  that  one  may  even  say  she  has  ceased  to 
care  for  truth  by  itself  at  all.  It  is  only  truth  as  tech- 
nically verified  that  interests  her.  The  truth  of  truths 
might  come  in  merely  affirmative  form,  and  she  would 
decline  to  touch  it.  Such  truth  as  that,  she  might 
repeat  with  Clifford,  would  be  stolen  in  defiance  of 
her  duty  to  mankind.  Human  passions,  however,  are 
stronger  than  technical  rules.  "  Le  cceur  a  ses  rai- 
sons,"  as  Pascal  says,  "  que  la  raison  ne  connait  pas ;  " 
and  however  indifferent  to  all  but  the  bare  rules  of 
the  game  the  umpire,  the  abstract  intellect,  may  be, 
the  concrete  players  who  furnish  him  the  materials  to 
judge  of  are  usually,  each  one  of  them,  in  love  with 
some  pet '  live  hypothesis  '  of  his  own.  Let  us  agree, 
however,  that  wherever  there  is  no  forced  option,  the 

1  Compare  Wilfrid  Ward's  Essay,  "  The  Wish  to  Believe,"  in  his 
Witnesses  to  the  Unseen^  Macmillan  &  Co.,  1893. 


22  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

dispassionately  judicial  intellect  with  no  pet  hypoth- 
esis, saving  us,  as  it  does,  from  dupery  at  any  rate, 
ought  to  be  our  ideal. 

The  question  next  arises :  Are  there  not  somewhere 
forced  options  in  our  speculative  questions,  and  can 
we  (as  men  who  may  be  interested  at  least  as  much 
in  positively  gaining  truth  as  in  merely  escaping 
dupery)  always  wait  with  impunity  till  the  coercive 
evidence  shall  have  arrived  ?  It  seems  a  priori  im- 
probable that  the  truth  should  be  so  nicely  adjusted 
to  our  needs  and  powers  as  that.  In  the  great  board- 
ing-house of  nature,  the  cakes  and  the  butter  and  the 
syrup  seldom  come  out  so  even  and  leave  the  plates 
so  clean.  Indeed,  we  should  view  them  with  scien- 
tific suspicion  if  they  did. 


IX. 

Moral  questions  immediately  present  themselves  as 
questions  whose  solution  cannot  wait  for  sensible 
proof.  A  moral  question  is  a  question  not  of  what 
sensibly  exists,  but  of  what  is  good,  or  would  be  good 
if  it  did  exist.  Science  can  tell  us  what  exists ;  but 
to  compare  the  worths,  both  of  what  exists  and  of 
what  does  not  exist,  we  must  consult  not  science,  but 
what  Pascal  calls  our  heart.  Science  herself  consults 
her  heart  when  she  lays  it  down  that  the  infinite  as- 
certainment of  fact  and  correction  of  false  belief  are 
the  supreme  goods  for  man.  Challenge  the  state- 
ment, and  science  can  only  repeat  it  oracularly,  or 
else  prove  it  by  showing  that  such  ascertainment  and 
correction  bring  man  all  sorts  of  other  goods  which 
man's  heart  in  turn  declares.  The  question  of  having 
moral  beliefs  at  all  or  not  having  them  is  decided  by 


The  Will  to  Believe.  23 

our  will.  Are  our  moral  preferences  true  or  false, 
or  are  they  only  odd  biological  phenomena,  making 
things  good  or  bad  for  us,  but  in  themselves  in- 
different? How  can  your  pure  intellect  decide?  If 
your  heart  does  not  want  a  world  of  moral  reality, 
your  head  will  assuredly  never  make  you  believe  in 
one.  Mephistophelian  scepticism,  indeed,  will  satisfy 
the  head's  play-instincts  much  better  than  any  rigor- 
ous idealism  can.  Some  men  (even  at  the  student 
age)  are  so  naturally  cool-hearted  that  the  moralistic 
hypothesis  never  has  for  them  any  pungent  life,  and 
in  their  supercilious  presence  the  hot  young  moralist 
always  feels  strangely  ill  at  ease.  The  appearance  of 
knowingness  is  on  their  side,  of  nctivetf  and  gullibility 
on  his.  Yet,  in  the  inarticulate  heart  of  him,  he  clings 
to  it  that  he  is  not  a  dupe,  and  that  there  is  a  realm 
in  which  (as  Emerson  says)  all  their  wit  and  intel- 
lectual superiority  is  no  better  than  the  cunning  of 
a  fox.  Moral  scepticism  can  no  more  be  refuted  or 
proved  by  logic  than  intellectual  scepticism  can. 
When  we  stick  to  it  that  there  is  truth  (be  it  of  either 
kind),  we  do  so  with  our  whole  nature,  and  resolve  to 
stand  or  fall  by  the  results.  The  sceptic  with  his 
whole  nature  adopts  the  doubting  attitude ;  but  which 
of  us  is  the  wiser,  Omniscience  only  knows. 

Turn  now  from  these  wide  questions  of  good  to  a 
certain  class  of  questions  of  fact,  questions  concerning 
personal  relations,  states  of  mind  between  one  man 
and  another.  Do  you  like  me  or  not  f  —  for  example. 
Whether  you  do  or  not  depends,  in  countless  in- 
stances, on  whether  I  meet  you  half-way,  am  willing 
to  assume  that  you  must  like  me,  and  show  you  trust 
and  expectation.  The  previous  faith  on  my  part  in 
your  liking's  existence  is  in  such  cases  what  makes 


24  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

your  liking  come.  But  if  I  stand  aloof,  and  refuse  to 
budge  an  inch  until  I  have  objective  evidence,  until 
you  shall  have  done  something  apt,  as  the  absolutists 
say,  ad  extorquendum  assensum  meum,  ten  to  one  your 
liking  never  comes.  How  many  women's  hearts  are 
vanquished  by  the  mere  sanguine  insistence  of  some 
man  that  they  must  love  him  !  he  will  not  consent  to 
the  hypothesis  that  they  cannot.  The  desire  for  a 
certain  kind  of  truth  here  brings  about  that  special 
truth's  existence ;  and  so  it  is  in  innumerable  cases  of 
other  sorts.  Who  gains  promotions,  boons,  appoint- 
ments, but  the  man  in  whose  life  they  are  seen  to 
play  the  part  of  live  hypotheses,  who  discounts  them, 
sacrifices  other  things  for  their  sake  before  they  have 
come,  and  takes  risks  for  them  in  advance?  His 
faith  acts  on  the  powers  above  him  as  a  claim,  and 
creates  its  own  verification. 

A  social  organism  of  any  sort  whatever,  large  or 
small,  is  what  it  is  because  each  member  proceeds  to 
his  own  duty  with  a  trust  that  the  other  members  will 
simultaneously  do  theirs.  Wherever  a  desired  result 
is  achieved  by  the  co-operation  of  many  independent 
persons,  its  existence  as  a  fact  is  a  pure  consequence 
of  the  precursive  faith  in  one  another  of  those  imme- 
diately concerned.  A  government,  an  army,  a  com- 
mercial system,  a  ship,  a  college,  an  athletic  team,  all 
exist  on  this  condition,  without  which  not  only  is 
nothing  achieved,  but  nothing  is  even  attempted.  A 
whole  train  of  passengers  (individually  brave  enough) 
will  be  looted  by  a  few  highwaymen,  simply  because 
the  latter  can  count  on  one  another,  while  each  pas- 
senger fears  that  if  he  makes  a  movement  of  resist- 
ance, he  will  be  shot  before  any  one  else  backs  him 
up.  If  we  believed  that  the  whole  car-full  would  rise 


The  Will  to  Believe.  25 

at  once  with  us,  we  should  each  severally  rise,  and 
train-robbing  would  never  even  be  attempted.  There 
are,  then,  cases  where  a  fact  cannot  come  at  all  unless 
a  preliminary  faith  exists  in  its  coming.  And  where 
faith  in  a  fact  can  help  create  the  fact,  that  would  be 
an  insane  logic  which  should  say  that  faith  running 
ahead  of  scientific  evidence  is  the  '  lowest  kind  of 
immorality '  into  which  a  thinking  being  can  fall.  Yet 
such  is  the  logic  by  which  our  scientific  absolutists 
pretend  to  regulate  our  lives ! 


X. 

In  truths  dependent  on  our  personal  action,  then, 
faith  based  on  desire  is  certainly  a  lawful  and  pos- 
sibly an  indispensable  thing. 

But  now,  it  will  be  said,  these  are  all  childish  hu- 
man cases,  and  have  nothing  to  do  with  great  cosmi- 
cal  matters,  like  the  question  of  religious  faith.  Let 
us  then  pass  on  to  that.  Religions  differ  so  much 
in  their  accidents  that  in  discussing  the  religious 
question  we  must  make  it  very  generic  and  broad. 
What  then  do  we  now  mean  by  the  religious  hypo- 
thesis? Science  says  things  are ;  morality  says  some 
things  are  better  than  other  things ;  and  religion  says 
essentially  two  things. 

First,  she  says  that  the  best  things  are  the  more 
eternal  things,  the  overlapping  things,  the  things  in 
the  universe  that  throw  the  last  stone,  so  to  speak, 
and  say  the  final  word.  "  Perfection  is  eternal,"  — 
this  phrase  of  Charles  Secr^tan  seems  a  good  way  of 
putting  this  first  affirmation  of  religion,  an  affirmation 
which  obviously  cannot  yet  be  verified  scientifically 
at  all. 


l6  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

The  second  affirmation  of  religion  is  that  we  are 
better  off  even  now  if  we  believe  her  first  affirmation 
to  be  true. 

Now,  let  us  consider  what  the  logical  elements  of 
this  situation  are  in  case  the  religious  hypothesis  in  both 
its  branches  be  really  true.  (Of  course,  we  must  admit 
that  possibility  at  the  outset.  If  we  are  to  discuss 
the  question  at  all,  it  must  involve  a  living  option. 
If  for  any  of  you  religion  be  a  hypothesis  that  cannot, 
by  any  living  possibility  be  true,  then  you  need  go 
no  farther.  I  speak  to  the  'saving  remnant*  alone.) 
So  proceeding,  we  see,  first,  that  religion  offers  itself 
as  a  momentous  option.  We  are  supposed  to  gain, 
even  now,  by  our  belief,  and  to  lose  by  our  non- 
belief,  a  certain  vital  good.  Secondly,  religion  is  a 
forced  option,  so  far  as  that  good  goes.  We  cannot 
escape  the  issue  by  remaining  sceptical  and  waiting 
for  more  light,  because,  although  we  do  avoid  error 
in  that  way  if  religion  be  untrue,  we  lose  the  good, 
if  it  be  true,  just  as  certainly  as  if  we  positively  chose 
to  disbelieve.  It  is  as  if  a  man  should  hesitate  indefi- 
nitely to  ask  a  certain  woman  to  marry  him  because 
he  was  not  perfectly  sure  that  she  would  prove  an 
angel  after  he  brought  her  home.  Would  he  not 
cut  himself  off  from  that  particular  angel-possibility 
as  decisively  as  if  he  went  and  married  some  one 
else?  Scepticism,  then,  is  not  avoidance  of  option; 
it  is  option  of  a  certain  particular  kind  of  risk.  Better 
risk  loss  of  truth  than  chance  of  error,  —  that  is  your 
faith-vetoer's  exact  position.  He  is  actively  playing 
his  stake  as  much  as  the  believer  is;  he  is  backing 
the  field  against  the  religious  hypothesis,  just  as  the 
believer  is  backing  the  religious  hypothesis  against  the 
field.  To  preach  scepticism  to  us  as  a  duty  until 


The  Will  to  Believe.  27 

'  sufficient  evidence '  for  religion  be  found,  is  tanta- 
mount therefore  to  telling  us,  when  in  presence  of  the 
religious  hypothesis,  that  to  yield  to  our  fear  of  its 
being  error  is  wiser  and  better  than  to  yield  to  our 
hope  that  it  may  be  true.  It  is  not  intellect  against 
all  passions,  then ;  it  is  only  intellect  with  one  pas- 
sion laying  down  its  law.  And  by  what,  forsooth, 
is  the  supreme  wisdom  of  this  passion  warranted? 
Dupery  for  dupery,  what  proof  is  there  that  dupery 
through  hope  is  so  much  worse  than  dupery  through 
fear?  I,  for  one,  can  see  no  proof;  and  I  simply 
refuse  obedience  to  the  scientist's  command  to  imi- 
tate his  kind  of  option,  in  a  case  where  my  own  stake 
is  important  enough  to  give  me  the  right  to  choose 
my  own  form  of  risk.  If  religion  be  true  and  the 
evidence  for  it  be  still  insufficient,  I  do  not  wish,  by 
putting  .your  extinguisher  upon  my  nature  (which 
feels  to  me  as  if  it  had  after  all  some  business  in  this 
matter),  to  forfeit  my  sole  chance  in  life  of  getting 
upon  the  winning  side,  —  that  chance  depending,  of 
course,  on  my  willingness  to  run  the  risk  of  acting 
as  if  my  passional  need  of  taking  the  world  religiously 
might  be  prophetic  and  right. 

All  this  is  on  the  supposition  that  it  really  may 
be  prophetic  and  right,  and  that,  even  to  us  who  are 
discussing  the  matter,  religion  is  a  live  hypothesis 
which  may  be  true.  Now,  to  most  of  us  religion 
comes  in  a  still  further  way  that  makes  a  veto  on 
our  active  faith  even  more  illogical.  The  more  per- 
fect and  more  eternal  aspect  of  the  universe  is  rep- 
resented in  our  religions  as  having  personal  form. 
The  universe  is  no  longer  a  mere  It  to  us,  but  a  Thou, 
if  we  are  religious ;  and  any  relation  that  may  be 
possible  from  person  to  person  might  be  possible 


28  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy, 

here.  For  instance,  although  in  one  sense  we  are 
passive  portions  of  the  universe,  in  another  we  show 
a  curious  autonomy,  as  if  we  were  small  active  cen- 
tres on  our  own  account.  We  feel,  too,  as  if  the 
appeal  of  religion  to  us  were  made  to  our  own  active 
good-will,  as  if  evidence  might  be  forever  withheld 
from  us  unless  we  met  the  hypothesis  half-way.  To 
take  a  trivial  illustration :  just  as  a  man  who  in  a 
company  of  gentlemen  made  no  advances,  asked  a 
warrant  for  every  concession,  and  believed  no  one's 
word  without  proof,  would  cut  himself  off  by  such 
churlishness  from  all  the  social  rewards  that  a  more 
trusting  spirit  would  earn,  —  so  here,  one  who  should 
shut  himself  up  in  snarling  logicality  and  try  to  make 
the  gods  extort  his  recognition  willy-nilly,  or  not  get 
it  at  all,  might  cut  himself  off  forever  from  his  only 
opportunity  of  making  the  gods'  acquaintance.  This 
feeling,  forced  on  us  we  know  not  whence,  that  by 
obstinately  believing  that  there  are  gods  (although 
not  to  do  so  would  be  so  easy  both  for  our  logic  and 
our  life)  we  are  doing  the  universe  the  deepest  ser- 
vice we  can,  seems  part  of  the  living  essence  of  the 
religious  hypothesis.  If  the  hypothesis  were  true  in 
all  its  parts,  including  this  one,  then  pure  intellectu- 
alism,  with  its  veto  on  our  making  willing  advances, 
would  be  an  absurdity;  and  some  participation  of 
our  sympathetic  nature  would  be  logically  required. 
I,  therefore,  for  one,  cannot  see  my  way  to  accepting 
the  agnostic  rules  for  truth-seeking,  or  wilfully  agree 
to  keep  my  willing  nature  out  of  the  game.  I  cannot 
do  so  for  this  plain  reason,  that  a  rule  of  thinking 
which  would  absolutely  prevent  me  from  acknowledg- 
ing certain  kinds  of  truth  if  those  kinds  of  truth  were 
really  therey  would  be  an  irrational  rule.  That  for  me 


The  Will  to  Believe.  29 

's  the  long  and  short  of  the  formal  logic  of  the  situa- 
tion, no  matter  what  the  kinds  of  truth  might  materi- 
ally be. 

I  confess  I  do  not  see  how  this  logic  can  be 
escaped.  But  sad  experience  makes  me  fear  that 
some  of  you  may  still  shrink  from  radically  saying 
with  me,  in  abstracto,  that  we  have  the  right  to 
believe  at  our  own  risk  any  hypothesis  that  is  live 
enough  to  tempt  our  will.  I  suspect,  however,  that 
if  this  is  so,  it  is  because  you  have  got  away  from 
the  abstract  logical  point  of  view  altogether,  and  are 
thinking  (perhaps  without  realizing  it)  of  some  par- 
ticular religious  hypothesis  which  for  you  is  dead. 
The  freedom  to  '  believe  what  we  will '  you  apply  to 
the  case  of  some  patent  superstition;  and  the  faith 
you  think  of  is  the  faith  defined  by  the  schoolboy 
when  he  said,  "  Faith  is  when  you  believe  something 
that  you  know  ain't  true."  I  can  only  repeat  that 
this  is  misapprehension.  In  concrete,  the  freedom  to 
believe  can  only  cover  living  options  which  the  intel- 
lect of  the  individual  cannot  by  itself  resolve;  and 
living  options  never  seem  absurdities  to  him  who  has 
them  to  consider.  When  I  look  at  the  religious 
question  as  it  really  puts  itself  to  concrete  men,  and 
when  I  think  of  all  the  possibilities  which  both  prac- 
tically and  theoretically  it  involves,  then  this  command 
that  we  shall  put  a  stopper  on  our  heart,  instincts, 
and  courage,  and  wait — acting  of  course  mean- 
while more  or  less  as  if  religion  were  not  true 1  — 

1  Since  belief  is  measured  by  action,  he  who  forbids  us  to  believe 
religion  to  be  true,  necessarily  also  forbids  us  to  act  as  we  should  if 
we  did  believe  it  to  be  true.  The  whole  defence  of  religious  faith 
hinges  upon  action.  If  the  action  required  or  inspired  by  the  reli- 
gious hypothesis  is  in  no  way  different  from  that  dictated  by  the 


3<D  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

till  doomsday,  or  till  such  time  as  our  intellect  and 
senses  working  together  may  have  raked  in  evidence 
enough,  —  this  command,  I  say,  seems  to  me  the 
queerest  idol  ever  manufactured  in  the  philosophic 
cave.  Were  we  scholastic  absolutists,  there  might  be 
more  excuse.  If  we  had  an  infallible  intellect  with 
its  objective  certitudes,  we  might  feel  ourselves  dis- 
loyal to  such  a  perfect  organ  of  knowledge  in  not 
trusting  to  it  exclusively,  in  not  waiting  for  its  releas- 
ing word.  But  if  we  are  empiricists,  if  we  believe  that 
no  bell  in  us  tolls  to  let  us  know  for  certain  when 
truth  is  in  our  grasp,  then  it  seems  a  piece  of  idle 
fantasticality  to  preach  so  solemnly  our  duty  of  wait- 
ing for  the  bell.  Indeed  we  may  wait  if  we  will, — I 
hope  you  do  not  think  that  I  am  denying  that,  —  but 
if  we  do  so,  we  do  so  at  our  peril  as  much  as  if  we 
believed.  In  either  case  we  act,  taking  our  life  in 
our  hands.  No  one  of  us  ought  to  issue  vetoes  to 
the  other,  nor  should  we  bandy  words  of  abuse.  We 
ought,  on  the  contrary,  delicately  and  profoundly  to 
respect  one  another's  mental  freedom  :  then  only  shall 
we  bring  about  the  intellectual  republic ;  then  only 
shall  we  have  that  spirit  of  inner  tolerance  without 
which  all  our  outer  tolerance  is  soulless,  and  which  is 
empiricism's  glory;  then  only  shall  we  live  and  let 
live,  in  speculative  as  well  as  in  practical  things. 

I  began  by  a  reference  to  Fitz  James  Stephen ;  let 
me  end  by  a  quotation  from  him.    "  What  do  you  think 

naturalistic  hypothesis,  then  religious  faith  is  a  pure  superfluity, 
better  pruned  away,  and  controversy  about  its  legitimacy  is  a  piece 
of  idle  trifling,  unworthy  of  serious  minds.  I  myself  believe,  of 
course,  that  the  religious  hypothesis  gives  to  the  world  an  expression 
which  specifically  determines  our  reactions,  and  makes  them  in  a 
large  part  unlike  what  they  might  be  on  a  purely  naturalistic  scheme 
of  belief. 


The  Will  to  Believe.  31 

of  yourself?  What  do  you  think  of  the  world  ?  .  .  . 
These  are  questions  with  which  all  must  deal  as  it 
seems  good  to  them.  They  are  riddles  of  the  Sphinx, 
and  in  some  way  or  other  we  must  deal  with  them. 
...  In  all  important  transactions  of  life  we  have  to 
take  a  leap  in  the  dark.  .  .  .  If  we  decide  to  leave  the 
riddles  unanswered,  that  is  a  choice ;  if  we  waver  in 
our  answer,  that,  too,  is  a  choice  :  but  whatever  choice 
we  make,  we  make  it  at  our  peril.  If  a  man  chooses 
to  turn  his  back  altogether  on  God  and  the  future, 
no  one  can  prevent  him ;  no  one  can  show  beyond 
reasonable  doubt  that  he  is  mistaken.  If  a  man 
thinks  otherwise  and  acts  as  he  thinks,  I  do  not  see 
that  any  one  can  prove  that  he  is  mistaken.  Each 
must  act  as  he  thinks  best;  and  if  he  is  wrong,  so 
much  the  worse  for  him.  We  stand  on  a  mountain 
pass  in  the  midst  of  whirling  snow  and  blinding  mist, 
through  which  we  get  glimpses  now  and  then  of  paths 
which  may  be  deceptive.  If  we  stand  still  we  shall 
be  frozen  to  death.  If  we  take  the  wrong  road  we 
shall  be  dashed  to  pieces.  We  do  not  certainly  know 
whether  there  is  any  right  one.  What  must  we  do  ? 
'  Be  strong  and  of  a  good  courage.'  Act  for  the  best, 
hope  for  the  best,  and  take  what  comes.  ...  If 
death  ends  all,  we  cannot  meet  death  better."  1 

i  Liberty,  Equality,  Fraternity,  p.  353,  ad  edition.     London,  1874. 


32  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 


IS  LIFE  WORTH   LIVING?1 

WHEN  Mr.  Mallock's  book  with  this  title  ap- 
peared some  fifteen  years  ago,  the  jocose 
answer  that  "  it  depends  on  the  liver"  had  great 
currency  in  the  newspapers.  The  answer  which  I 
propose  to  give  to-night  cannot  be  jocose.  In  the 
words  of  one  of  Shakespeare's  prologues,  — 

"  I  come  no  more  to  make  you  laugh ;  things  now, 
That  bear  a  weighty  and  a  serious  brow, 
Sad,  high,  and  working,  full  of  state  and  woe,  "  — 

must  be  my  theme.  In  the  deepest  heart  of  all  of  us 
there  is  a  corner  in  which  the  ultimate  mystery  of 
things  works  sadly;  and  I  know  not  what  such  an 
association  as  yours  intends,  nor  what  you  ask  of 
those  whom  you  invite  to  address  you,  unless  it  be  to 
lead  you  from  the  surface-glamour  of  existence,  and 
for  an  hour  at  least  to  make  you  heedless  to  the 
buzzing  and  jigging  and  vibration  of  small  interests 
and  excitements  that  form  the  tissue  of  our  ordinary 
consciousness.  Without  further  explanation  or  apo- 
logy, then,  I  ask  you  to  join  me  in  turning  an  attention, 
commonly  too  unwilling,  to  the  profounder  bass-note 
of  life.  Let  us  search  the  lonely  depths  for  an  hour 
together,  and  see  what  answers  in  the  last  folds  and 
recesses  of  things  our  question  may  find. 

1  An  Address  to  the  Harvard  Young  Men's  Christian  Association. 
Published  in  the  International  Journal  of  Ethics  for  October,  1895, 
and  as  a  pocket  volume  by  S.  B.  Weston,  Philadelphia,  1896. 


Is  Life  Worth  Living? 


I. 

With  many  men  the  question  of  life's  worth  is  an- 
swered by  a  temperamental  optimism  which  makes 
them  incapable  of  believing  that  anything  seriously 
evil  can  exist.  Our  dear  old  Walt  Whitman's  works 
are  the  standing  text-book  of  this  kind  of  optimism. 
The  mere  joy  of  living  is  so  immense  in  Walt  Whit- 
man's veins  that  it  abolishes  the  possibility  of  any 
other  kind  of  feeling :  — 

"  To  breathe  the  air,  how  delicious ! 
To  speak,  to  walk,  to  seize  something  by  the  hand  !  .  .  . 
To  be  this  incredible  God  I  am  !  .  .  . 
O  amazement  of  things,  even  the  least  particle! 

0  spirituality  of  things ! 

1  too  carol  the  Sun,  usher'd  or  at  noon,  or  as  now,  setting ; 

I  too  throb  to  the  brain  and  beauty  of  the  earth  and  of  all  the 
growths  of  the  earth.  .  .  . 

I  sing  to  the  last  the  equalities,  modern  or  old, 

I  sing  the  endless  finales  of  things, 

I  say  Nature  continues  —  glory  continues. 

I  praise  with  electric  voice, 

For  I  do  not  see  one  imperfection  in  the  universe, 

And  I  do  not  see  one  cause  or  result  lamentable  at  last." 

So  Rousseau,  writing  of  the  nine  years  he  spent  at 
Annecy,  with  nothing  but  his  happiness  to  tell :  — 

"  How  tell  what  was  neither  said  nor  done  nor  even 
thought,  but  tasted  only  and  felt,  with  no  object  of  my 
felicity  but  the  emotion  of  felicity  itself!  I  rose  with  the 
sun,  and  I  was  happy  ;  I  went  to  walk,  and  I  was  happy ; 
I  saw  '  Maman,'  and  I  was  happy ;  I  left  her,  and  I  was 
happy.  I  rambled  through  the  woods  and  over  the  vine- 
slopes,  I  wandered  in  the  valleys,  I  read,  I  lounged,  I 

3 


34  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

worked  in  the  garden,  I  gathered  the  fruits,  I  helped  at 
the  indoor  work,  and  happiness  followed  me  everywhere. 
It  was  in  no  one  assignable  thing;  it  was  all  within  myself; 
it  could  not  leave  me  for  a  single  instant." 

If  moods  like  this  could  be  made  permanent,  and 
constitutions  like  these  universal,  there  would  never 
be  any  occasion  for  such  discourses  as  the  present 
one.  No  philosopher  would  seek  to  prove  articu- 
lately that  life  is  worth  living,  for  the  fact  that  it  ab- 
solutely is  so  would  vouch  for  itself,  and  the  problem 
disappear  in  the  vanishing  of  the  question  rather  than 
in  the  coming  of  anything  like  a  reply.  But  we  are 
not  magicians  to  make  the  optimistic  temperament 
universal ;  and  alongside  of  the  deliverances  of  tem- 
peramental optimism  concerning  life,  those  of  tem- 
peramental pessimism  always  exist,  and  oppose  to 
them  a  standing  refutation.  In  what  is  called  '  circu- 
lar insanity,'  phases  of  melancholy  succeed  phases  of 
mania,  with  no  outward  cause  that  we  can  discover; 
and  often  enough  to  one  and  the  same  well  person  life 
will  present  incarnate  radiance  to-day  and  incarnate 
dreariness  to-morrow,  according  to  the  fluctuations  of 
what  the  older  medical  books  used  to  call  "  the  concoc- 
tion of  the  humors."  In  the  words  of  the  newspaper 
joke,  "  it  depends  on  the  liver."  Rousseau's  ill-balanced 
constitution  undergoes  a  change,  and  behold  him  in 
his  latter  evil  days  a  prey  to  melancholy  and  black 
delusions  of  suspicion  and  fear.  Some  men  seem 
launched  upon  the  world  even  from  their  birth  with 
souls  as  incapable  of  happiness  as  Walt  Whitman's 
was  of  gloom,  and  they  have  left  us  their  messages  in 
even  more  lasting  verse  than  his,  —  the  exquisite 
Leopardi,  for  example;  or  our  own  contemporary, 


Is  Life  Worth  Living?  35 

James  Thomson,  in  that  pathetic  book,  The  City  of 
Dreadful  Night,  which  I  think  is  less  well-known 
than  it  should  be  for  its  literary  beauty,  simply  be- 
cause men  are  afraid  to  quote  its  words,  —  they  are 
so  gloomy,  and  at  the  same  time  so  sincere.  In  one 
place  the  poet  describes  a  congregation  gathered  to 
listen  to  a  preacher  in  a  great  unillumined  cathedral 
at  night.  The  sermon  is  too  long  to  quote,  but  it 
ends  thus :  — 

"  '  O  Brothers  of  sad  lives  !  they  are  so  brief ; 
A  few  short  years  must  bring  us  all  relief  : 

Can  we  not  bear  these  years  of  laboring  breath . 
But  if  you  would  not  this  poor  life  fulfil, 
Lo,  you  are  free  to  end  it  when  you  will, 
Without  the  fear  of  waking  after  death.'  — 

'•  The  organ-like  vibrations  of  his  voice 

Thrilled  through  the  vaulted  aisles  and  died  away; 
The  yearning  of  the  tones  which  bade  rejoice 

Was  sad  and  tender  as  a  requiem  lay : 
Our  shadowy  congregation  rested  still, 
As  brooding  on  that '  End  it  when  you  will.' 

*'  Our  shadowy  congregation  rested  still, 

As  musing  on  that  message  we  had  heard, 
And  brooding  on  that  '  End  it  when  you  will,' 

Perchance  awaiting  yet  some  other  word ; 
When  keen  as  lightning  through  a  muffled  sky 
Sprang  forth  a  shrill  and  lamentable  cry  :  — 

** '  The  man  speaks  sooth,  alas  !  the  man  speaks  sooth  : 

We  have  no  personal  life  beyond  the  grave; 
There  is  no  God  ;  Fate  knows  nor  wrath  nor  ruth : 
Can  I  find  here  the  comfort  which  I  crave  ? 

" '  In  all  eternity  I  had  one  chance, 

One  few  years'  term  of  gracious  human  life,  — 
The  splendors  of  the  intellect's  advance, 

The  sweetness  of  the  home  with  babes  and  wife  ; 


Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

"  '  The  social  pleasures  with  their  genial  wit; 

The  fascination  of  the  worlds  of  art ; 
The  glories  of  the  worlds  of  Nature  lit 
By  large  imagination's  glowing  heart ; 

** '  The  rapture  of  mere  being,  full  of  health ; 

The  careless  childhood  and  the  ardent  youth ; 

The  strenuous  manhood  winning  various  wealth, 

The  reverend  age  serene  with  life's  long  truth  : 

" «  All  the  sublime  prerogatives  of  Man  ; 

The  storied  memories  of  the  times  of  old, 
The  patient  tracking  of  the  world's  great  plan 
Through  sequences  and  changes  myriadfold. 

"  'This  chance  was  never  offered  me  before; 

For  me  the  infinite  past  is  blank  and  dumb; 
This  chance  recurreth  never,  nevermore  ; 
Blank,  blank  for  me  the  infinite  To-come. 

"  '  And  this  sole  chance  was  frustrate  from  my  birth, 

A  mockery,  a  delusion  ;  and  my  breath 
Of  noble  human  life  upon  this  earth 
So  racks  me  that  I  sigh  for  senseless  death. 

" '  My  wine  of  life  is  poison  mixed  with  gall, 

My  noonday  passes  in  a  nightmare  dream, 
I  worse  than  lose  the  years  which  are  my  all : 
What  can  console  me  for  the  loss  supreme? 

"  '  Speak  not  of  comfort  where  no  comfort  is, 

Speak  not  at  all :  can  words  make  foul  things  fair? 
Our  life  's  a  cheat,  our  death  a  black  abyss  : 
Hush,  and  be  mute,  envisaging  despair.' 

"  This  vehement  voice  came  from  the  northern  aisle, 

Rapid  and  shrill  to  its  abrupt  harsh  close ; 
And  none  gave  answer  for  a  certain  while, 

For  words  must  shrink  from  these  most  wordless  woes  ; 
At  last  the  pulpit  speaker  simply  said, 
With  humid  eyes  and  thoughtful,  drooping  head,  — 


Is  Life  Worth  Living?  37 

M<  My  Brother,  my  poor  Brothers,  it  is  thus: 
This  life  holds  nothing  good  for  us, 

But  it  ends  soon  and  nevermore  can  be ; 
And  we  knew  nothing  of  it  ere  our  birth, 
And  shall  know  nothing  when  consigned  to  earth : 

I  ponder  these  thoughts,  and  they  comfort  me.' " 

"  It  ends  soon,  and  never  more  can  be,"  "  Lo,  you 
are  free  to  end  it  when  you  will," — these  verses  flow 
truthfully  from  the  melancholy  Thomson's  pen,  and 
are  in  truth  a  consolation  for  all  to  whom,  as  to  him, 
the  world  is  far  more  like  a  steady  den  of  fear  than  a 
continual  fountain  of  delight.  That  life  is  not  worth 
living  the  whole  army  of  suicides  declare,  —  an  army 
whose  roll-call,  like  the  famous  evening  gun  of  the 
British  army,  follows  the  sun  round  the  world  and  never 
terminates.  We,  too,  as  we  sit  here  in  our  comfort, 
must  '  ponder  these  things '  also,  for  we  are  of  one 
substance  with  these  suicides,  and  their  life  is  the 
life  we  share.  The  plainest  intellectual  integrity, — 
nay,  more,  the  simplest  manliness  and  honor,  forbid 
us  to  forget  their  case. 

"  If  suddenly,"  says  Mr.  Ruskin,  "  in  the  midst  of  the 
enjoyments  of  the  palate  and  lightnesses  of  heart  of  a  Lon- 
don dinner-party,  the  walls  of  the  chamber  were  parted,  and 
through  their  gap  the  nearest  human  beings  who  were  fam- 
ishing and  in  misery  were  borne  into  the  midst  of  the  com- 
pany feasting  and  fancy  free ;  if,  pale  from  death,  horrible 
in  destitution,  broken  by  despair,  body  by  body  they  were 
laid  upon  the  soft  carpet,  one  beside  the  chair  of  every 
guest,  —  would  only  the  crumbs  of  the  dainties  be  cast  to 
them ;  would  only  a  passing  glance,  a  passing  thought,  be 
vouchsafed  to  them  ?  Yet  the  actual  facts,  the  real  relation 
of  each  Dives  and  Lazarus,  are  not  altered  by  the  interven- 


3  8  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

tion  of  the  house- wall  between  the  table  and  the  sick-bed,  — 
by  the  few  feet  of  ground  (how  few  !)  which  are,  indeed,  all 
that  separate  the  merriment  from  the  misery." 


II. 

To  come  immediately  to  the  heart  of  my  theme, 
then,  what  I  propose  is  to  imagine  ourselves  reason- 
ing with  a  fellow-mortal  who  is  on  such  terms  with 
life  that  the  only  comfort  left  him  is  to  brood  on  the 
assurance,  "  You  may  end  it  when  you  will."  What 
reasons  can  we  plead  that  may  render  such  a  brother 
(or  sister)  willing  to  take  up  the  burden  again? 
Ordinary  Christians,  reasoning  with  would-be  sui- 
cides, have  little  to  offer  them  beyond  the  usual 
negative,  "  Thou  shalt  not."  God  alone  is  master  of 
life  and  death,  they  say,  and  it  is  a  blasphemous  act 
to  anticipate  his  absolving  hand.  But  can  we  find 
nothing  richer  or  more  positive  than  this,  no  reflec- 
tions to  urge  whereby  the  suicide  may  actually  see, 
and  in  all  sad  seriousness  feel,  that  in  spite  of  adverse 
appearances  even  for  him  life  is  still  worth  living? 
There  are  suicides  and  suicides  (in  the  United  States 
about  three  thousand  of  them  every  year),  and  I 
must  frankly  confess  that  with  perhaps  the  majority 
of  these  my  suggestions  are  impotent  to  deal.  Where 
suicide  is  the  result  of  insanity  or  sudden  frenzied 
impulse,  reflection  is  impotent  to  arrest  its  headway ; 
and  cases  like  these  belong  to  the  ultimate  mystery 
of  evil,  concerning  which  I  can  only  offer  considera- 
tions tending  toward  religious  patience  at  the  end  of 
this  hour.  My  task,  let  me  say  now,  is  practically 
narrow,  and  my  words  are  to  deal  only  with  that 
metaphysical  tedium  vita  which  is  peculiar  to  reflect- 


Is  Life  Worth   Living?  39 

ing  men.  Most  of  you  are  devoted,  for  good  or  ill, 
to  the  reflective  life.  Many  of  you  are  students  of 
philosophy,  and  have  already  felt  in  your  own  per- 
sons the  scepticism  and  unreality  that  too  much 
grubbing  in  the  abstract  roots  of  things  will  breed. 
This  is,  indeed,  one  of  the  regular  fruits  of  the  over- 
studious  career.  Too  much  questioning  and  too 
little  active  responsibility  lead,  almost  as  often  as 
too  much  sensualism  does,  to  the  edge  of  the  slope, 
at  the  bottom  of  which  lie  pessimism  and  the  night- 
mare or  suicidal  view  of  life.  But  to  the  diseases 
which  reflection  breeds,  still  further  reflection  can 
oppose  effective  remedies;  and  it  is  of  the  melan- 
choly and  Weltschmerz  bred  of  reflection  that  I  now 
proceed  to  speak. 

Let  me  say,  immediately,  that  my  final  appeal  is  to 
nothing  more  recondite  than  religious  faith.  So  far 
as  my  argument  is  to  be  destructive,  it  will  consist  in 
nothing  more  than  the  sweeping  away  of  certain  views 
that  often  keep  the  springs  of  religious  faith  com- 
pressed ;  and  so  far  as  it  is  to  be  constructive,  it  will 
consist  in  holding  up  to  the  light  of  day  certain  con- 
siderations calculated  to  let  loose  these  springs  in  a 
normal,  natural  way.  Pessimism  is  essentially  a  re- 
ligious disease.  In  the  form  of  it  to  which  you  are 
most  liable,  it  consists  in  nothing  but  a  religious 
demand  to  which  there  comes  no  normal  religious 
reply. 

Now,  there  are  two  stages  of  recovery  from  this 
disease,  two  different  levels  upon  which  one  may 
emerge  from  the  midnight  view  to  the  daylight 
view  of  things,  and  I  must  treat  of  them  in  turn. 
The  second  stage  is  the  more  complete  and  joyous, 
and  it  corresponds  to  the  freer  exercise  of  religious 


40  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

trust  and  fancy.  There  are,  as  is  well  known,  per- 
sons who  are  naturally  very  free  in  this  regard,  others 
who  are  not  at  all  so.  There  are  persons,  for  instance, 
whom  we  find  indulging  to  their  heart's  content  in 
prospects  of  immortality;  and  there  are  others  who 
experience  the  greatest  difficulty  in  making  such  a 
notion  seem  real  to  themselves  at  all.  These  latter 
persons  are  tied  to  their  senses,  restricted  to  their 
natural  experience;  and  many  of  them,  moreover, 
feel  a  sort  of  intellectual  loyalty  to  what  they  call 
'  hard  facts,'  which  is  positively  shocked  by  the  easy 
excursions  into  the  unseen  that  other  people  make 
at  the  bare  call  of  sentiment.  Minds  of  either  class 
may,  however,  be  intensely  religious.  They  may 
equally  desire  atonement  and  reconciliation,  and 
crave  acquiescence  and  communion  with  the  total 
soul  of  things.  But  the  craving,  when  the  mind 
is  pent  in  to  the  hard  facts,  especially  as  science 
now  reveals  them,  can  breed  pessimism,  quite  as 
easily  as  it  breeds  optimism  when  it  inspires  re- 
ligious trust  and  fancy  to  wing  their  way  to  another 
and  a  better  world. 

That  is  why  I  call  pessimism  an  essentially  religious 
disease.  The  nightmare  view  of  life  has  plenty  of 
organic  sources ;  but  its  great  reflective  source  has 
at  all  times  been  the  contradiction  between  the  phe- 
nomena of  nature  and  the  craving  of  the  heart  to 
believe  that  behind  nature  there  is  a  spirit  whose 
expression  nature  is.  What  philosophers  call  '  nat- 
ural theology '  has  been  one  way  of  appeasing  this 
craving ;  that  poetry  of  nature  in  which  our  English 
literature  is  so  rich  has  been  another  way.  Now, 
suppose  a  mind  of  the  latter  of  our  two  classes,  whose 
imagination  is  pent  in  consequently,  and  who  takes  its 


Is  Life  Worth  Living  ?  41 

facts  '  hard ; '  suppose  it,  moreover,  to  feel  strongly 
the  craving  for  communion,  and  yet  to  realize  how 
desperately  difficult  it  is  to  construe  the  scientific 
order  of  nature  either  theologically  or  poetically,  — 
and  what  result  can  there  be  but  inner  discord  and 
contradiction?  Now,  this  inner  discord  (merely  as 
discord)  can  be  relieved  in  either  of  two  ways :  The 
longing  to  read  the  facts  religiously  may  cease,  and 
leave  the  bare  facts  by  themselves;  or,  supplemen- 
tary facts  may  be  discovered  or  believed-in,  which 
permit  the  religious  reading  to  go  on.  These  two 
ways  of  relief  are  the  two  stages  of  recovery,  the  two 
levels  of  escape  from  pessimism,  to  which  I  made 
allusion  a  moment  ago,  and  which  the  sequel  will, 
I  trust,  make  more  clear. 


III. 

Starting  then  with  nature,  we  naturally  tend,  if  we 
have  the  religious  craving,  to  say  with  Marcus  Aure- 
lius,  "  O  Universe !  what  thou  wishest  I  wish."  Our 
sacred  books  and  traditions  tell  us  of  one  God  who 
made  heaven  and  earth,  and,  looking  on  them,  saw 
that  they  were  good.  Yet,  on  more  intimate  acquain- 
tance, the  visible  surfaces  of  heaven  and  earth  refuse 
to  be  brought  by  us  into  any  intelligible  unity  at  all. 
Every  phenomenon  that  we  would  praise  there  exists 
cheek  by  jowl  with  some  contrary  phenomenon  that 
cancels  all  its  religious  effect  upon  the  mind.  Beauty 
and  hideousness,  love  and  cruelty,  life  and  death  keep 
house  together  in  indissoluble  partnership  ;  and  there 
gradually  steals  over  us,  instead  of  the  old  warm 
notion  of  a  man-loving  Deity,  that  of  an  awful  power 
that  neither  hates  nor  loves,  but  rolls  all  things  to- 


42  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

gather  meaninglessly  to  a  common  doom.  This  is 
an  uncanny,  a  sinister,  a  nightmare  view  of  life,  and 
its  peculiar  unheimlichkeit,  or  poisonousness,  lies  ex- 
pressly in  our  holding  two  things  together  which  can- 
not possibly  agree,  —  in  our  clinging,  on  the  one 
hand,  to  the  demand  that  there  shall  be  a  living  spirit 
of  the  whole ;  and,  on  the  other,  to  the  belief  that 
the  course  of  nature  must  be  such  a  spirit's  adequate 
manifestation  and  expression.  It  is  in  the  contra- 
diction between  the  supposed  being  of  a  spirit  that 
encompasses  and  owns  us,  and  with  which  we  ought 
to  have  some  communion,  and  the  character  of  such 
a  spirit  as  revealed  by  the  visible  world's  course,  that 
this  particular  death-in-life  paradox  and  this  melan- 
choly-breeding puzzle  reside.  Carlyle  expresses  the 
result  in  that  chapter  of  his  immortal  '  Sartor  Resar- 
tus '  entitled  '  The  Everlasting  No.'  "  I  lived,"  writes 
poor  Teufelsdrockh,  "  in  a  continual,  indefinite,  pining 
fear;  tremulous,  pusillanimous,  apprehensive  of  I 
knew  not  what :  it  seemed  as  if  all  things  in  the  heav- 
ens above  and  the  earth  beneath  would  hurt  me ;  as 
if  the  heavens  and  the  earth  were  but  boundless  jaws 
of  a  devouring  monster,  wherein  I,  palpitating,  lay 
waiting  to  be  devoured." 

This  is  the  first  stage  of  speculative  melancholy. 
No  brute  can  have  this  sort  of  melancholy;  no  man 
who  is  irreligious  can  become  its  prey.  It  is  the  sick 
shudder  of  the  frustrated  religious  demand,  and  not 
the  mere  necessary  outcome  of  animal  experience. 
Teufelsdrockh  himself  could  have  made  shift  to  face 
the  general  chaos  and  bedevilment  of  this  world's 
experiences  very  well,  were  he  not  the  victim  of  an 
originally  unlimited  trust  and  affection  towards  them. 
If  he  might  meet  them  piecemeal,  with  no  suspicion 


Is  Life  Worth  Living?  43 

of  any  whole  expressing  itself  in  them,  shunning  the 
bitter  parts  and  husbanding  the  sweet  ones,  as  the 
occasion  served,  and  as  the  day  was  foul  or  fair,  he 
could  have  zigzagged  toward  an  easy  end,  and  felt 
no  obligation  to  make  the  air  vocal  with  his  lamen- 
tations. The  mood  of  levity,  of  '  I  don't  care,'  is  for 
this  world's  ills  a  sovereign  and  practical  anaesthetic. 
But,  no  !  something  deep  down  in  Teufelsdrockh  and 
in  the  rest  of  us  tells  us  that  there  is  a  Spirit  in  things 
to  which  we  owe  allegiance,  and  for  whose  sake  we 
must  keep  up  the  serious  mood.  And  so  the  inner 
fever  and  discord  also  are  kept  up ;  for  nature  taken 
on  her  visible  surface  reveals  no  such  Spirit,  and  be- 
yond the  facts  of  nature  we  are  at  the  present  stage 
of  our  inquiry  not  supposing  ourselves  to  look. 

Now,  I  do  not  hesitate  frankly  and  sincerely  to  con- 
fess to  you  that  this  real  and  genuine  discord  seems 
to  me  to  carry  with  it  the  inevitable  bankruptcy  of 
natural  religion  naively  and  simply  taken.  There 
were  times  when  Leibnitzes  with  their  heads  buried 
in  monstrous  wigs  could  compose  Theodicies,  and 
when  stall-fed  officials  of  an  established  church  could 
prove  by  the  valves  in  the  heart  and  the  round  liga- 
ment of  the  hip-joint  the  existence  of  a  "  Moral  and 
Intelligent  Contriver  of  the  World."  But  those  times 
are  past;  and  we  of  the  nineteenth  century,  with  our 
evolutionary  theories  and  our  mechanical  philoso- 
phies, already  know  nature  too  impartially  and  too 
well  to  worship  unreservedly  any  God  of  whose  char- 
acter she  can  be  an  adequate  expression.  Truly,  all 
we  know  of  good  and  duty  proceeds  from  nature ; 
but  none  the  less  so  all  we  know  of  evil.  Visible 
nature  is  all  plasticity  and  indifference,  —  a  moral 
multiverse,  as  one  might  call  it,  and  not  a  moral  uni- 


44  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

verse.  To  such  a  harlot  we  owe  no  allegiance ;  with 
her  as  a  whole  we  can  establish  no  moral  commun- 
ion ;  and  we  are  free  in  our  dealings  with  her  several 
parts  to  obey  or  destroy,  and  to  follow  no  law  but 
that  of  prudence  in  coming  to  terms  with  such  of  her 
particular  features  as  will  help  us  to  our  private  ends. 
If  there  be  a  divine  Spirit  of  the  universe,  nature, 
such  as  we  know  her,  cannot  possibly  be  its  ultimate 
word  to  man.  Either  there  is  no  Spirit  revealed  in 
nature,  or  else  it  is  inadequately  revealed  there ;  and 
(as  all  the  higher  religions  have  assumed)  what  we 
call  visible  nature,  or  this  world,  must  be  but  a  veil 
and  surface-show  whose  full  meaning  resides  in  a 
supplementary  unseen  or  other  world. 

I  cannot  help,  therefore,  accounting  it  on  the  whole 
a  gain  (though  it  may  seem  for  certain  poetic  consti- 
tutions a  very  sad  loss)  that  the  naturalistic  supersti- 
tion, the  worship  of  the  God  of  nature,  simply  taken 
as  such,  should  have  begun  to  loosen  its  hold  upon 
the  educated  mind.  In  fact,  if  I  am  to  express  my 
personal  opinion  unreservedly,  I  should  say  (in  spite 
of  its  sounding  blasphemous  at  first  to  certain  ears) 
that  the  initial  step  towards  getting  into  healthy  ulti- 
mate relations  with  the  universe  is  the  act  of  rebellion 
against  the  idea  that  such  a  God  exists.  Such  rebel- 
lion essentially  is  that  which  in  the  chapter  I  have 
quoted  from  Carlyle  goes  on  to  describe :  — 

"'Wherefore,  like  a  coward,  dost  thou  forever  pip  and 
whimper,  and  go  cowering  and  trembling?  Despicable 
biped !  .  .  .  Hast  thou  not  a  heart ;  canst  thou  not  suffer 
whatsoever  it  be ;  and,  as  a  Child  of  Freedom,  though  out- 
cast, trample  Tophet  itself  under  thy  feet,  while  it  con- 
sumes thee  ?  Let  it  come,  then ;  I  will  meet  it  and  defy  it ! ' 
And  as  I  so  thought,  there  rushed  like  a  stream  of  fire 


Is  Life  Worth  Living?  45 

over  my  whole  soul ;  and  I  shook  base  Fear  away  from  me 
forever.  .  .  . 

"  Thus  had  the  Everlasting  No  pealed  authoritatively  through 
all  the  recesses  of  my  being,  of  my  Me ;  and  then  was  it 
that  my  whole  Me  stood  up,  in  native  God-created  majesty, 
and  recorded  its  Protest.  Such  a  Protest,  the  most  impor- 
tant transaction  in  life,  may  that  same  Indignation  and  Defi- 
ance, in  a  psychological  point  of  view,  be  fitly  called.  The 
Everlasting  No  had  said :  '  Behold,  thou  art  fatherless,  out- 
cast, and  the  Universe  is  mine  ; '  to  which  my  whole  Me 
now  made  answer :  '  I  am  not  thine,  but  Free,  and  forever 
hate  thee  ! '  From  that  hour,"  Teufelsdrockh-Carlyle  adds, 
"  I  began  to  be  a  man." 

And  our  poor  friend,  James  Thomson,  similarly 
writes :  — 

"  Who  is  most  wretched  in  this  dolorous  place  ? 
I  think  myself ;  yet  I  would  rather  be 
My  miserable  self  than  He,  than  He 
Who  formed  such  creatures  to  his  own  disgrace. 

The  vilest  thing  must  be  less  vile  than  Thou 
From  whom  it  had  its  being,  God  and  Lord! 
Creator  of  all  woe  and  sin  !   abhorred, 

Malignant  and  implacable  !     I  vow 

That  not  for  all  Thy  power  furled  and  unfurled, 

For  all  the  temples  to  Thy  glory  built, 

Would  I  assume  the  ignominious  guilt 
Of  having  made  such  men  in  such  a  world." 

We  are  familiar  enough  in  this  community  with  the 
spectacle  of  persons  exulting  in  their  emancipation 
from  belief  in  the  God  of  their  ancestral  Calvinism,  — 
him  who  made  the  garden  and  the  serpent,  and  pre- 
appointed  the  eternal  fires  of  hell.  Some  of  them 
have  found  humaner  gods  to  worship,  others  are  sim- 
ply converts  from  all  theology ;  but,  both  alike,  they 


^6  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

assure  us  that  to  have  got  rid  of  the  sophistication  of 
thinking  they  could  feel  any  reverence  or  duty  toward 
that  impossible  idol  gave  a  tremendous  happiness  to 
their  souls.  Now,  to  make  an  idol  of  the  spirit  of 
nature,  and  worship  it,  also  leads  to  sophistication ; 
and  in  souls  that  are  religious  and  would  also  be 
scientific  the  sophistication  breeds  a  philosophical 
melancholy,  from  which  the  first  natural  step  of  es- 
cape is  the  denial  of  the  idol ;  and  with  the  downfall 
of  the  idol,  whatever  lack  of  positive  joyousness  may 
remain,  there  comes  also  the  downfall  of  the  whim- 
pering and  cowering  mood.  With  evil  simply  taken 
as  such,  men  can  make  short  work,  for  their  relations 
with  it  then  are  only  practical.  It  looms  up  no  longer 
so  spectrally,  it  loses  all  its  haunting  and  perplexing 
significance,  as  soon  as  the  mind  attacks  the  instances 
of  it  singly,  and  ceases  to  worry  about  their  derivation 
from  the  '  one  and  only  Power.' 

Here,  then,  on  this  stage  of  mere  emancipation 
from  monistic  superstition,  the  would-be  suicide  may 
already  get  encouraging  answers  to  his  question  about 
the  worth  of  life.  There  are  in  most  men  instinctive 
springs  of  vitality  that  respond  healthily  when  the 
burden  of  metaphysical  and  infinite  responsibility 
rolls  off.  The  certainty  that  you  now  may  step  out 
of  life  whenever  you  please,  and  that  to  do  so  is  not 
blasphemous  or  monstrous,  is  itself  an  immense  relief. 
The  thought  of  suicide  is  now  no  longer  a  guilty 
challenge  and  obsession. 

"  This  little  life  is  all  we  must  endure  ; 
The  grave's  most  holy  peace  is  ever  sure,"  — 

says  Thomson ;  adding,  "  I  ponder  these  thoughts, 
and  they  comfort  me."  Meanwhile  we  can  always 


Is  Life  Worth  Living?  47 

stand  it  for  twenty-four  hours  longer,  if  only  to  see 
what  to-morrow's  newspaper  will  contain,  or  what  the 
next  postman  will  bring. 

But  far  deeper  forces  than  this  mere  vital  curiosity 
are  arousable,  even  in  the  pessimistically-tending 
mind ;  for  where  the  loving  and  admiring  impulses 
are  dead,  the  hating  and  fighting  impulses  will  still 
respond  to  fit  appeals.  This  evil  which  we  feel  so 
deeply  is  something  that  we  can  also  help  to  over- 
throw ;  for  its  sources,  now  that  no  '  Substance  '  or 
'  Spirit '  is  behind  them,  are  finite,  and  we  can  deal 
with  each  of  them  in  turn.  It  is,  indeed,  a  remark- 
able fact  that  sufferings  and  hardships  do  not,  as  a 
rule,  abate  the  love  of  life ;  they  seem,  on  the  con- 
trary, usually  to  give  it  a  keener  zest.  The  sovereign 
source  of  melancholy  is  repletion.  Need  and  strug- 
gle are  what  excite  and  inspire  us ;  our  hour  of  tri- 
umph is  what  brings  the  void.  Not  the  Jews  of  the 
captivity,  but  those  of  the  days  of  Solomon's  glory 
are  those  from  whom  the  pessimistic  utterances  in 
our  Bible  come.  Germany,  when  she  lay  trampled 
beneath  the  hoofs  of  Bonaparte's  troopers,  produced 
perhaps  the  most  optimistic  and  idealistic  literature 
that  the  world  has  seen;  and  not  till  the  French 
'milliards'  were  distributed  after  1871  did  pessimism 
overrun  the  country  in  the  shape  in  which  we  see  it 
there  to-day.  The  history  of  our  own  race  is  one 
long  commentary  on  the  cheerfulness  that  comes  with 
fighting  ills.  Or  take  the  Waldenses,  of  whom  I 
lately  have  been  reading,  as  examples  of  what  strong 
men  will  endure.  In  1485  a  papal  bull  of  Innocent 
VIII.  enjoined  their  extermination.  It  absolved  those 
who  should  take  up  the  crusade  against  them  from  all 
ecclesiastical  pains  and  penalties,  released  them  from 


48  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

any  oath,  legitimized  their  title  to  all  property  which 
they  might  have  illegally  acquired,  and  promised 
remission  of  sins  to  all  who  should  kill  the  heretics. 

"  There  is  no  town  in  Piedmont,"  says  aVaudois  writer, 
"  where  some  of  our  brethren  have  not  been  put  to  death. 
Jordan  Terbano  was  burnt  alive  at  Susa ;  Hippolite  Rossiero 
at  Turin;  Michael  Goneto,  an  octogenarian,  at  Sarcena; 
Vilermin  Ambrosio  hanged  on  the  Col  di  Meano ;  Hugo 
Chiambs,  of  Fenestrelle,  had  his  entrails  torn  from  his  living 
body  at  Turin ;  Peter  Geymarali  of  Bobbio  in  like  manner 
had  his  entrails  taken  out  in  Lucerna,  and  a  fierce  cat  thrust 
in  their  place  to  torture  him  further ;  Maria  Romano  was 
buried  alive  at  Rocca  Patia ;  Magdalena  Fauno  underwent 
the  same  fate  at  San  Giovanni ;  Susanna  Michelini  was 
bound  hand  and  foot,  and  left  to  perish  of  cold  and  hunger 
on  the  snow  at  Sarcena :  Bartolomeo  Fache,  gashed  with 
sabres,  had  the  wounds  filled  up  with  quicklime,  and  per- 
ished thus  in  agony  at  Fenile ;  Daniel  Michelini  had  his 
tongue  torn  out  at  Bobbo  for  having  praised  God ;  James 
Baridari  perished  covered  with  sulphurous  matches  which 
had  been  forced  into  his  flesh  under  the  nails,  between  the 
fingers,  in  the  nostrils,  in  the  lips,  and  all  over  the  body,  and 
then  lighted ;  Daniel  Rovelli  had  his  mouth  filled  with  gun- 
powder, which,  being  lighted,  blew  his  head  to  pieces ;  .  .  . 
Sara  Rostignol  was  slit  open  from  the  legs  to  the  bosom,  and 
left  so  to  perish  on  the  road  between  Eyral  and  Lucerna ; 
Anna  Charbonnier  was  impaled,  and  carried  thus  on  a  pike 
from  San  Giovanni  to  La  Torre."  * 

Und  dergleichen  mehr  !  In  1630  the  plague  swept 
away  one-half  of  the  Vaudois  population,  including 
fifteen  of  their  seventeen  pastors.  The  places  of 
these  were  supplied  from  Geneva  and  Dauphiny,  and 

1  Quoted  by  George  E.  Waring  in  his  book  on  Tyrol.  Compare 
A.  Berard :  Les  Vaudois,  Lvon,  Storck,  1892. 


Is  Life  Worth  Living?  49 

the  whole  Vaudois  people  learned  French  in  order  to 
follow  their  services.  More  than  once  their  number 
fell,  by  unremitting  persecution,  from  the  normal 
standard  of  twenty-five  thousand  to  about  four  thou- 
sand. In  1686  the  Duke  of  Savoy  ordered  the  three 
thousand  that  remained  to  give  up  their  faith  or  leave 
the  country.  Refusing,  they  fought  the  French  and 
Piedmontese  armies  till  only  eighty  of  their  fighting 
men  remained  alive  or  uncaptured,  when  they  gave 
up,  and  were  sent  in  a  body  to  Switzerland.  But  in 
1689,  encouraged  by  William  of  Orange  and  led  by 
one  of  their  pastor-captains,  between  eight  hundred 
and  nine  hundred  of  them  returned  to  conquer  their 
old  homes  again.  They  fought  their  way  to  Bobi, 
reduced  to  four  hundred  men  in  the  first  half  year, 
and  met  every  force  sent  against  them ;  until  at  last 
the  Duke  of  Savoy,  giving  up  his  alliance  with  that 
abomination  of  desolation,  Louis  XIV.,  restored  them 
to  comparative  freedom,  —  since  which  time  they  have 
increased  and  multiplied  in  their  barren  Alpine  val- 
leys to  this  day. 

What  are  our  woes  and  sufferance  compared  with 
these?  Does  not  the  recital  of  such  a  fight  so  obsti- 
nately waged  against  such  odds  fill  us  with  resolution 
against  our  petty  powers  of  darkness,  —  machine 
politicians,  spoilsmen,  and  the  rest  ?  Life  is  worth 
living,  no  matter  what  it  bring,  if  only  such  combats 
may  be  carried  to  successful  terminations  and  one's 
heel  set  on  the  tyrant's  throat.  To  the  suicide,  then, 
in  his  supposed  world  of  multifarious  and  immoral 
nature,  you  can  appeal  —  and  appeal  in  the  name  of 
the  very  evils  that  make  his  heart  sick  there  —  to 
wait  and  see  his  part  of  the  battle  out.  And  the  con- 
sent to  live  on,  which  you  ask  of  him  under  these 

4 


50  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

circumstances,  is  not  the  sophistical  'resignation* 
which  devotees  of  cowering  religions  preach :  it  is 
not  resignation  in  the  sense  of  licking  a  despotic 
Deity's  hand.  It  is,  on  the  contrary,  a  resignation 
based  on  manliness  and  pride.  So  long  as  your 
would-be  suicide  leaves  an  evil  of  his  own  unremedied, 
so  long  he  has  strictly  no  concern  with  evil  in  the 
abstract  and  at  large.  The  submission  which  you 
demand  of  yourself  to  the  general  fact  of  evil  in 
the  world,  your  apparent  acquiescence  in  it,  is  here 
nothing  but  the  conviction  that  evil  at  large  is  none 
of  your  business  until  your  business  with  your  private 
particular  evils  is  liquidated  and  settled  up.  A  chal- 
lenge of  this  sort,  with  proper  designation  of  detail,  is 
one  that  need  only  be  made  to  be  accepted  by  men 
whose  normal  instincts  are  not  decayed ;  and  your 
reflective  would-be  suicide  may  easily  be  moved  by 
it  to  face  life  with  a  certain  interest  again.  The  senti- 
ment of  honor  is  a  very  penetrating  thing.  When 
you  and  I,  for  instance,  realize  how  many  innocent 
beasts  have  had  to  suffer  in  cattle-cars  and  slaughter- 
pens  and  lay  down  their  lives  that  we  might  grow 
up,  all  fattened  and  clad,  to  sit  together  here  in  com- 
fort and  carry  on  this  discourse,  it  does,  indeed,  put 
our  relation  to  the  universe  in  a  more  solemn  light. 
"  Does  not,"  as  a  young  Amherst  philosopher  (Xenos 
Clark,  now  dead)  once  wrote,  "the  acceptance  of 
a  happy  life  upon  such  terms  involve  a  point  of 
honor?"  Are  we  not  bound  to  take  some  suffering 
upon  ourselves,  to  do  some  self-denying  service  with 
our  lives,  in  return  for  all  those  lives  upon  which  ours 
are  built?  To  hear  this  question  is  to  answer  it  in 
but  one  possible  way,  if  one  have  a  normally  consti- 
tuted heart. 


Is  Life  Worth  Living?  51 

Thus,  then,  we  see  that  mere  instinctive  curiosity, 
pugnacity,  and  honor  may  make  life  on  a  purely 
naturalistic  basis  seem  worth  living  from  day  to  day 
to  men  who  have  cast  away  all  metaphysics  in  order 
to  get  rid  of  hypochondria,  but  who  are  resolved  to 
owe  nothing  as  yet  to  religion  and  its  more  positive 
gifts.  A  poor  half-way  stage,  some  of  you  may  be 
inclined  to  say ;  but  at  least  you  must  grant  it  to  be 
an  honest  stage ;  and  no  man  should  dare  to  speak 
meanly  of  these  instincts  which  are  our  nature's  best 
equipment,  and  to  which  religion  herself  must  in  the 
last  resort  address  her  own  peculiar  appeals. 


IV. 

« 

And  now,  in  turning  to  what  religion  may  have  to 
say  to  the  question,  I  come  to  what  is  the  soul  of  my 
discourse.  Religion  has  meant  many  things  in  hu- 
man history ;  but  when  from  now  onward  I  use  the 
word  I  mean  to  use  it  in  the  supernaturalist  sense,  as 
declaring  that  the  so-called  order  of  nature,  which 
constitutes  this  world's  experience,  is  only  one  portion 
of  the  total  universe,  and  that  there  stretches  beyond 
this  visible  world  an  unseen  world  of  which  we  now 
know  nothing  positive,  but  in  its  relation  to  which 
the  true  significance  of  our  present  mundane  life  con- 
sists. A  man's  religious  faith  (whatever  more  special 
items  of  doctrine  it  may  involve)  means  for  me  essen- 
tially his  faith  in  the  existence  of  an  unseen  order  of 
some  kind  in  which  the  riddles  of  the  natural  order 
may  be  found  explained.  In  the  more  developed 
religions  the  natural  world  has  always  been  regarded 
as  the  mere  scaffolding  or  vestibule  of  a  truer,  more 
eternal  world,  and  affirmed  to  be  a  sphere  of  educa- 


52  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

tion,  trial,  or  redemption.  In  these  religions,  one 
must  in  some  fashion  die  to  the  natural  life  before 
one  can  enter  into  life  eternal.  The  notion  that  this 
physical  world  of  wind  and  water,  where  the  sun  rises 
and  the  moon  sets,  is  absolutely  and  ultimately  the 
divinely  aimed-at  and  established  thing,  is  one  which 
we  find  only  in  very  early  religions,  such  as  that  of 
the  most  primitive  Jews.  It  is  this  natural  religion 
(primitive  still,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  poets  and 
men  of  science  whose  good-will  exceeds  their  per- 
spicacity keep  publishing  it  in  new  editions  tuned 
to  our  contemporary  ears)  that,  as  I  said  a  while  ago, 
has  suffered  definitive  bankruptcy  in  the  opinion  of  a 
circle  of  persons,  among  whom  I  must  count  myself, 
and  who  are  growing  more  numerous  every  day.  For 
such  persons  the  physical  order  of  nature,  taken  sim- 
ply as  science  knows  it,  cannot  be  held  to  reveal  any 
one  harmonious  spiritual  intent.  It  is  mere  weather, 
as  Chauncey  Wright  called  it,  doing  and  undoing 
without  end. 

Now,  I  wish  to  make  you  feel,  if  I  can  in  the  short 
remainder  of  this  hour,  that  we  have  a  right  to  believe 
the  physical  order  to  be  only  a  partial  order;  that 
we  have  a  right  to  supplement  it  by  an  unseen 
spiritual  order  which  we  assume  on  trust,  if  only 
thereby  life  may  seem  to  us  better  worth  living  again. 
But  as  such  a  trust  will  seem  to  some  of  you  sadly 
mystical  and  execrably  unscientific,  I  must  first  say  a 
word  or  two  to  weaken  the  veto  which  you  may  con- 
sider that  science  opposes  to  our  act. 

There  is  included  in  human  nature  an  ingrained 
naturalism  and  materialism  of  mind  which  can  only 
admit  facts  that  are  actually  tangible.  Of  this  sort 
of  mind  the  entity  called  '  science '  is  the  idol. 


Is  Life  Worth  Living?  53 

Fondness  for  the  word  '  scientist '  is  one  of  the  notes 
by  which  you  may  know  its  votaries ;  and  its  short 
way  of  killing  any  opinion  that  it  disbelieves  in  is  to 
call  it  '  unscientific.'  It  must  be  granted  that  there 
is  no  slight  excuse  for  this.  Science  has  made  such 
glorious  leaps  in  the  last  three  hundred  years,  and 
extended  our  knowledge  of  nature  so  enormously 
both  in  general  and  in  detail ;  men  of  science,  more- 
over, have  as  a  class  displayed  such  admirable  vir- 
tues,—  that  it  is  no  wonder  if  the  worshippers  of 
science  lose  their  head.  In  this  very  University, 
accordingly,  I  have  heard  more  than  one  teacher  say 
that  all  the  fundamental  conceptions  of  truth  have 
already  been  found  by  science,  and  that  the  future 
has  only  the  details  of  the  picture  to  fill  in.  But  the 
slightest  reflection  on  the  real  conditions  will  suffice 
to  show  how  barbaric  such  notions  are.  They  show 
such  a  lack  of  scientific  imagination,  that  it  is  hard  to 
see  how  one  who  is  actively  advancing  any  part  of 
science  can  make  a  mistake  so  crude.  Think  how 
many  absolutely  new  scientific  conceptions  have 
arisen  in  our  own  generation,  how  many  new  prob- 
lems have  been  formulated  that  were  never  thought 
of  before,  and  then  cast  an  eye  upon  the  brevity  of 
science's  career.  It  began  with  Galileo,  not  three 
hundred  years  ago.  Four  thinkers  since  Galileo, 
each  informing  his  successor  of  what  discoveries  his 
own  lifetime  had  seen  achieved,  might  have  passed 
the  torch  of  science  into  our  hands  as  we  sit  here  in 
this  room.  Indeed,  for  the  matter  of  that,  an  audi- 
ence much  smaller  than  the  present  one,  an  audience 
of  some  five  or  six  score  people,  if  each  person  in 
it  could  speak  for  his  own  generation,  would  carry 
us  away  to  the  black  unknown  of  the  human  species, 


54  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

to  days  without  a  document  or  monument  to  tell 
their  tale.  Is  it  credible  that  such  a  mushroom 
knowledge,  such  a  growth  overnight  as  this,  can 
represent  more  than  the  minutest  glimpse  of  what 
the  universe  will  really  prove  to  be  when  adequately 
understood?  No!  our  science  is  a  drop,  our  igno- 
rance a  sea.  Whatever  else  be  certain,  this  at  least 
is  certain,  —  that  the  world  of  our  present  natural 
knowledge  is  enveloped  in  a  larger  world  of  some 
sort  of  whose  residual  properties  we  at  present  can 
frame  no  positive  idea. 

Agnostic  positivism,  of  course,  admits  this  prin- 
ciple theoretically  in  the  most  cordial  terms,  but 
insists  that  we  must  not  turn  it  to  any  practical  use. 
We  have  no  right,  this  doctrine  tells  us,  to  dream 
dreams,  or  suppose  anything  about  the  unseen  part 
of  the  universe,  merely  because  to  do  so  may  be  for 
what  we  are  pleased  to  call  our  highest  interests. 
We  must  always  wait  for  sensible  evidence  for  our 
beliefs ;  and  where  such  evidence  is  inaccessible  we 
must  frame  no  hypotheses  whatever.  Of  course  this 
is  a  safe  enough  position  in  abstracto.  If  a  thinker 
had  no  stake  in  the  unknown,  no  vital  needs,  to  live 
or  languish  according  to  what  the  unseen  world  con- 
tained, a  philosophic  neutrality  and  refusal  to  believe 
either  one  way  or  the  other  would  be  his  wisest  cue. 
But,  unfortunately,  neutrality  is  not  only  inwardly 
difficult,  it  is  also  outwardly  unrealizable,  where  our 
relations  to  an  alternative  are  practical  and  vital. 
This  is  because,  as  the  psychologists  tell  us,  belief 
and  doubt  are  living  attitudes,  and  involve  conduct 
on  our  part.  Our  only  way,  for  example,  of  doubt- 
ing, or  refusing  to  believe,  that  a  certain  thing  is,  is 
continuing  to  act  as  if  it  were  not.  If,  for  instance, 


Is  Life  Worth  Living  ?  55 

I  refuse  to  believe  that  the  room  is  getting  cold,  I 
leave  the  windows  open  and  light  no  fire  just  as  if  it 
still  were  warm.  If  I  doubt  that  you  are  worthy  of 
my  confidence,  I  keep  you  uninformed  of  all  my 
secrets  just  as  if  you  were  z^zworthy  of  the  same.  If 
I  doubt  the  need  of  insuring  my  house,  I  leave  it  un- 
insured as  much  as  if  I  believed  there  were  no  need. 
And  so  if  I  must  not  believe  that  the  world  is  divine, 
I  can  only  express  that  refusal  by  declining  ever  to 
act  distinctively  as  if  it  were  so,  which  can  only  mean 
acting  on  certain  critical  occasions  as  if  it  were  not 
so,  or  in  an  irreligious  way.  There  are,  you  see,  in- 
evitable occasions  in  life  when  inaction  is  a  kind  of  ac- 
tion, and  must  count  as  action,  and  when  not  to  be  for 
is  to  be  practically  against ;  and  in  all  such  cases  strict 
and  consistent  neutrality  is  an  unattainable  thing. 

And,  after  all,  is  not  this  duty  of  neutrality  where 
only  our  inner  interests  would  lead  us  to  believe,  the 
most  ridiculous  of  commands?  Is  it  not  sheer  dog- 
matic folly  to  say  that  our  inner  interests  can  have  no 
real  connection  with  the  forces  that  the  hidden  world 
may  contain?  In  other  cases  divinations  based  on 
inner  interests  have  proved  prophetic  enough.  Take 
science  itself!  Without  an  imperious  inner  demand 
on  our  part  for  ideal  logical  and  mathematical  harmo- 
nies, we  should  never  have  attained  to  proving  that 
such  harmonies  lie  hidden  between  all  the  chinks  and 
interstices  of  the  crude  natural  world.  Hardly  a 
law  has  been  established  in  science,  hardly  a  fact  as- 
certained, which  was  not  first  sought  after,  often  with 
sweat  and  blood,  to  gratify  an  inner  need.  Whence 
such  needs  come  from  we  do  not  know:  we  find 
them  in  us,  and  biological  psychology  so  far  only 
classes  them  with  Darwin's  '  accidental  variations.' 


56  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

But  the  inner  need  of  believing  that  this  world  of 
nature  is  a  sign  of  something  more  spiritual  and 
eternal  than  itself  is  just  as  strong  and  authoritative 
in  those  who  feel  it,  as  the  inner  need  of  uniform  laws 
of  causation  ever  can  be  in  a  professionally  scientific 
head.  The  toil  of  many  generations  has  proved  the 
latter  need  prophetic.  Why  may  not  the  former  one 
be  prophetic,  too?  And  if  needs  of  ours  outrun  the 
visible  universe,  why  may  not  that  be  a  sign  that 
an  invisible  universe  is  there?  What,  in  short,  has 
authority  to  debar  us  from  trusting  our  religious 
demands?  Science  as  such  assuredly  has  no  author- 
ity, for  she  can  only  say  what  is,  not  what  is  not; 
and  the  agnostic  "  thou  shalt  not  believe  without 
coercive  sensible  evidence  "  is  simply  an  expression 
(free  to  any  one  to  make)  of  private  personal  appe- 
tite for  evidence  of  a  certain  peculiar  kind. 

Now,  when  I  speak  of  trusting  our  religious  de- 
mands, just  what  do  I  mean  by  '  trusting '  ?  Is  the 
word  to  carry  with  it  license  to  define  in  detail  an 
invisible  world,  and  to  anathematize  and  excommuni- 
cate those  whose  trust  is  different?  Certainly  not! 
Our  faculties  of  belief  were  not  primarily  given  us  to 
make  orthodoxies  and  heresies  withal ;  they  were 
given  us  to  live  by.  And  to  trust  our  religious  de- 
mands means  first  of  all  to  live  in  the  light  of  them, 
and  to  act  as  if  the  invisible  world  which  they  sug- 
gest were  real.  It  is  a  fact  of  human  nature,  that 
men  can  live  and  die  by  the  help  of  a  sort  of  faith 
that  goes  without  a  single  dogma  or  definition.  The 
bare  assurance  that  this  natural  order  is  not  ultimate 
but  a  mere  sign  or  vision,  the  external  staging  of 
a  many-storied  universe,  in  which  spiritual  forces 
have  the  last  word  and  are  eternal,  —  this  bare  assur- 


Is  Life  Worth  Living?  57 

ance  is  to  such  men  enough  to  make  life  seem  worth 
living  in  spite  of  every  contrary  presumption  sug- 
gested by  its  circumstances  on  the  natural  plane. 
Destroy  this  inner  assurance,  however,  vague  as  it  is, 
and  all  the  light  and  radiance  of  existence  is  extin- 
guished for  these  persons  at  a  stroke.  Often  enough 
the  wild-eyed  look  at  life — the  suicidal  mood  —  will 
then  set  in. 

And  now  the  application  comes  directly  home  to 
you  and  me.  Probably  to  almost  every  one  of  us 
here  the  most  adverse  life  would  seem  well  worth 
living,  if  we  only  could  be  certain  that  our  bravery 
and  patience  with  it  were  terminating  and  eventuating 
and  bearing  fruit  somewhere  in  an  unseen  spiritual 
world.  But  granting  we  are  not  certain,  does  it  then 
follow  that  a  bare  trust  in  such  a  world  is  a  fool's 
paradise  and  lubberland,  or  rather  that  it  is  a  living 
attitude  in  which  we  are  free  to  indulge?  Well,  we 
are  free  to  trust  at  our  own  risks  anything  that  is  not 
impossible,  and  that  can  bring  analogies  to  bear  in  its 
behalf.  That  the  world  of  physics  is  probably  not 
absolute,  all  the  converging  multitude  of  arguments 
that  make  in  favor  of  idealism  tend  to  prove ;  and 
that  our  whole  physical  life  may  lie  soaking  in  a  spir- 
itual atmosphere,  a  dimension  of  being  that  we  at 
present  have  no  organ  for  apprehending,  is  vividly 
suggested  to  us  by  the  analogy  of  the  life  of  our 
domestic  animals.  Our  dogs,  for  example,  are  in  our 
human  life  but  not  of  it.  They  witness  hourly  the 
outward  body  of  events  whose  inner  meaning  cannot, 
by  any  possible  operation,  be  revealed  to  their  intelli- 
gence, —  events  in  which  they  themselves  often  play 
the  cardinal  part.  My  terrier  bites  a  teasing  boy,  for 
example,  and  the  father  demands  damages.  The  dog 


58  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

may  be  present  at  every  step  of  the  negotiations,  and 
see  the  money  paid,  without  an  inkling  of  what  it  all 
means,  without  a  suspicion  that  it  has  anything  to  do 
with  him  ;  and  he  never  can  know  in  his  natural  dog's 
life.  Or  take  another  case  which  used  greatly  to 
impress  me  in  my  medical-student  days.  Consider  a 
poor  dog  whom  they  are  vivisecting  in  a  laboratory. 
He  lies  strapped  on  a  board  and  shrieking  at  his  exe- 
cutioners, and  to  his  own  dark  consciousness  is  literally 
in  a  sort  of  hell.  He  cannot  see  a  single  redeeming 
ray  in  the  whole  business ;  and  yet  all  these  diaboli- 
cal-seeming events  are  often  controlled  by  human 
intentions  with  which,  if  his  poor  benighted  mind 
could  only  be  made  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  them,  all 
that  is  heroic  in  him  would  religiously  acquiesce. 
Healing  truth,  relief  to  future  sufferings  of  beast  and 
man,  are  to  be  bought  by  them.  It  may  be  genuinely 
a  process  of  redemption.  Lying  on  his  back  on  the 
board  there  he  may  be  performing  a  function  incal- 
culably higher  than  any  that  prosperous  canine  life 
admits  of;  and  yet,  of  the  whole  performance,  this 
function  is  the  one  portion  that  must  remain  absolutely 
beyond  his  ken. 

Now  turn  from  this  to  the  life  of  man.  In  the 
dog's  life  we  see  the  world  invisible  to  him  because 
we  live  in  both  worlds.  In  human  life,  although  we 
only  see  our  world,  and  his  within  it,  yet  encompass- 
ing both  these  worlds  a  still  wider  world  may  be 
there,  as  unseen  by  us  as  our  world  is  by  him ;  and  to 
believe  in  that  world  may  be  the  most  essential  func- 
tion that  our  lives  in  this  world  have  to  perform. 
But  "  may  be  !  may  be  !  "  one  now  hears  the  positivist 
contemptuously  exclaim ;  "  what  use  can  a  scientific 
life  have  for  maybes?"  Well,  I  reply,  the  'scien- 


Is  Life  Worth  Living  ?  59 

tific  '  life  itself  has  much  to  do  with  maybes,  and  human 
life  at  large  has  everything  to  do  with  them.  So  far 
as  man  stands  for  anything,  and  is  productive  or 
originative  at  all,  his  entire  vital  function  may  be  said 
to  have  to  deal  with  maybes.  Not  a  victory  is  gained, 
not  a  deed  of  faithfulness  or  courage  is  done,  except 
upon  a  maybe ;  not  a  service,  not  a  sally  of  generos- 
ity, not  a  scientific  exploration  or  experiment  or  text- 
book, that  may  not  be  a  mistake.  It  is  only  by  risk- 
ing our  persons  from  one  hour  to  another  that  we 
live  at  all.  And  often  enough  our  faith  beforehand 
in  an  uncertified  result  is  the  only  thing  that  makes 
the  result  come  true.  Suppose,  for  instance,  that  you 
are  climbing  a  mountain,  and  have  worked  yourself 
into  a  position  from  which  the  only  escape  is  by  a 
terrible  leap.  Have  faith  that  you  can  successfully 
make  it,  and  your  feet  are  nerved  to  its  accomplish- 
ment. But  mistrust  yourself,  and  think  of  all  the 
sweet  things  you  have  heard  the  scientists  say  of 
maybes,  and  you  will  hesitate  so  long  that,  at  last,  all 
unstrung  and  trembling,  and  launching  yourself  in  a 
moment  of  despair,  you  roll  in  the  abyss.  In  such  a 
case  (and  it  belongs  to  an  enormous  class),  the  part 
of  wisdom  as  well  as  of  courage  is  to  believe  what  is 
in  the  line  of  your  needs,  for  only  by  such  belief  is  the 
need  fulfilled.  Refuse  to  believe,  and  you  shall  in- 
deed be  right,  for  you  shall  irretrievably  perish.  But 
believe,  and  again  you  shall  be  right,  for  you  shall 
save  yourself.  You  make  one  or  the  other  of  two 
possible  universes  true  by  your  trust  or  mistrust,  — 
both  universes  having  been  only  maybes,  in  this  par- 
ticular, before  you  contributed  your  act. 

Now,  it  appears  to  me  that  the  question  whether 
life  is  worth  living  is  subject  to  conditions  logically 


60  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

much  like  these.  It  does,  indeed,  depend  on  you  the 
liver.  If  you  surrender  to  the  nightmare  view  and 
crown  the  evil  edifice  by  your  own  suicide,  you  have 
indeed  made  a  picture  totally  black.  Pessimism, 
completed  by  your  act,  is  true  beyond  a  doubt,  so 
far  as  your  world  goes.  Your  mistrust  of  life  has  re- 
moved whatever  worth  your  own  enduring  existence 
might  have  given  to  it;  and  now,  throughout  the 
whole  sphere  of  possible  influence  of  that  existence, 
the  mistrust  has  proved  itself  to  have  had  divining 
power.  But  suppose,  on  the  other  hand,  that  instead 
of  giving  way  to  the  nightmare  view  you  cling  to  it 
that  this  world  is  not  the  ultimatum.  Suppose  you  find 
yourself  a  very  well-spring,  as  Wordsworth  says,  of — 

"  Zeal,  and  the  virtue  to  exist  by  faith 
As  soldiers  live  by  courage  ;  as,  by  strength 
Of  heart,  the  sailor  fights  with  roaring  seas." 

Suppose,  however  thickly  evils  crowd  upon  you,  that 
your  unconquerable  subjectivity  proves  to  be  their 
match,  and  that  you  find  a  more  wonderful  joy  than 
any  passive  pleasure  can  bring  in  trusting  ever  in  the 
larger  whole.  Have  you  not  now  made  life  worth 
living  on  these  terms?  What  sort  of  a  thing  would 
life  really  be,  with  your  qualities  ready  for  a  tussle 
with  it,  if  it  only  brought  fair  weather  and  gave  these 
higher  faculties  of  yours  no  scope  ?  Please  remember 
that  optimism  and  pessimism  are  definitions  of  the 
world,  and  that  our  own  reactions  on  the  world,  small 
as  they  are  in  bulk,  are  integral  parts  of  the  whole 
thing,  and  necessarily  help  to  determine  the  defini- 
tion. They  may  even  be  the  decisive  elements  in 
determining  the  definition.  A  large  mass  can  have 
its  unstable  equilibrium  overturned  by  the  addition 


Is  Life  Worth  Living?  61 

of  a  feather's  weight;  a  long  phrase  may  have  its 
sense  reversed  by  the  addition  of  the  three  letters 
n-o-t.  This  life  is  worth  living,  we  can  say,  since  it 
is  what  we  make  it,  from  the  moral  point  of  view  ;  and 
we  are  determined  to  make  it  from  that  point  of  view, 
so  far  as  we  have  anything  to  do  with  it,  a  success. 

Now,  in  this  description  of  faiths  that  verify  them- 
selves I  have  assumed  that  our  faith  in  an  invisible 
order  is  what  inspires  those  efforts  and  that  patience 
which  make  this  visible  order  good  for  moral  men. 
Our  faith  in  the  seen  world's  goodness  (goodness  now 
meaning  fitness  for  successful  moral  and  religious 
life)  has  verified  itself  by  leaning  on  our  faith  in  the 
unseen  world.  But  will  our  faith  in  the  unseen  world 
similarly  verify  itself?  Who  knows? 

Once  more  it  is  a  case  of  maybe ;  and  once  more 
maybes  are  the  essence  of  the  situation.  I  confess 
that  I  do  not  see  why  the  very  existence  of  an  invisi- 
ble world  may  not  in  part  depend  on  the  personal 
response  which  any  one  of  us  may  make  to  the  reli- 
gious appeal.  God  himself,  in  short,  may  draw  vital 
strength  and  increase  of  very  being  from  our  fidelity. 
For  my  own  part,  I  do  not  know  what  the  sweat  and 
blood  and  tragedy  of  this  life  mean,  if  they  mean  any- 
thing short  of  this.  If  this  life  be  not  a  real  fight,  in 
which  something  is  eternally  gained  for  the  universe 
by  success,  it  is  no  better  than  a  game  of  private  the- 
atricals from  which  one  may  withdraw  at  will.  But 
it  feels  like  a  real  fight,  —  as  if  there  were  something 
really  wild  in  the  universe  which  we,  with  all  our  ide- 
alities and  faithfulnesses,  are  needed  to  redeem ;  and 
first  of  all  to  redeem  our  own  hearts  from  atheisms 
and  fears.  For  such  a  half-wild,  half-saved  universe 
our  nature  is  adapted.  The  deepest  thing  in  ouf 


62  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

nature  is  this  Binnenleben  (as  a  German  doctor  lately 
bas  called  it),  this  dumb  region  of  the  heart  in  which 
we  dwell  alone  with  our  willingnesses  and  unwilling- 
nesses, our  faiths  and  fears.  As  through  the  cracks 
and  crannies  of  caverns  those  waters  exude  from 
the  earth's  bosom  which  then  form  the  fountain-heads 
of  springs,  so  in  these  crepuscular  depths  of  person- 
ality the  sources  of  all  our  outer  deeds  and  decisions 
take  their  rise.  Here  is  our  deepest  organ  of  com- 
munication with  the  nature  of  things ;  and  compared 
with  these  concrete  movements  of  our  soul  all  abstract 
statements  and  scientific  arguments  —  the  veto,  for 
example,  which  the  strict  positivist  pronounces  upon 
our  faith  —  sound  to  us  like  mere  chatterings  of  the 
teeth.  For  here  possibilities,  not  finished  facts,  are 
the  realities  with  which  we  have  actively  to  deal ;  and 
to  quote  my  friend  William  Salter,  of  the  Philadelphia 
Ethical  Society,  "  as  the  essence  of  courage  is  to  stake 
one's  life  on  a  possibility,  so  the  essence  of  faith  is  to 
believe  that  the  possibility  exists." 

These,  then,  are  my  last  words  to  you:  Be  not 
afraid  of  life.  Believe  that  life  is  worth  living,  and 
your  belief  will  help  create  the  fact.  The  '  scientific 
proof  that  you  are  right  may  not  be  clear  before  the 
day  of  judgment  (or  some  stage  of  being  which  that 
expression  may  serve  to  symbolize)  is  reached.  But 
the  faithful  fighters  of  this  hour,  or  the  beings  that 
then  and  there  will  represent  them,  may  then  turn  to 
the  faint-hearted,  who  here  decline  to  go  on,  with 
words  like  those  with  which  Henry  IV.  greeted  the 
tardy  Crillon  after  a  great  victory  had  been  gained : 
"  Hang  yourself,  brave  Crillon  !  we  fought  at  Arques, 
and  you  were  not  there." 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  63 


THE  SENTIMENT  OF  RATIONALITY.1 

I. 

WHAT  is  the  task  which  philosophers  set  them- 
selves to  perform ;  and  why  do  they  philos- 
ophize at  all?  Almost  every  one  will  immediately 
reply:  They  desire  to  attain  a  conception  of  the 
frame  of  things  which  shall  on  the  whole  be  more  ra- 
tional than  that  somewhat  chaotic  view  which  every 
one  by  nature  carries  about  with  him  under  his  hat. 
But  suppose  this  rational  conception  attained,  how  is 
the  philosopher  to  recognize  it  for  what  it  is,  and  not 
let  it  slip  through  ignorance?  The  only  answer  can 
be  that  he  will  recognize  its  rationality  as  he  recog- 
nizes everything  else,  by  certain  subjective  marks 
with  which  it  affects  him.  When  he  gets  the  marks, 
he  may  know  that  he  has  got  the  rationality. 

What,  then,  are  the  marks?  A  strong  feeling  of 
ease,  peace,  rest,  is  one  of  them.  The  transition 
from  a  state  of  puzzle  and  perplexity  to  rational  com- 
prehension is  full  of  lively  relief  and  pleasure. 

But  this  relief  seems  to  be  a  negative  rather  than 
a  positive  character.  Shall  we  then  say  that  the  feel- 
ing of  rationality  is  constituted  merely  by  the  absence 

1  This  essay  as  far  as  page  75  consists  of  extracts  from  an  article 
printed  in  Mind  for  July,  1879.  Thereafter  it  is  a  reprint  of  an 
address  to  the  Harvard  Philosophical  Club,  delivered  in  1880,  and 
published  in  the  Princeton  Review,  July,  1882. 


64.  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

of  any  feeling  of  irrationality  ?  I  think  there  are  very 
good  grounds  for  upholding  such  a  view.  All  feel- 
ing whatever,  in  the  light  of  certain  recent  psy- 
chological speculations,  seems  to  depend  for  its 
physical  condition  not  on  simple  discharge  of  nerve- 
currents,  but  on  their  discharge  under  arrest,  impedi- 
ment, or  resistance.  Just  as  we  feel  no  particular 
pleasure  when  we  breathe  freely,  but  a  very  intense 
feeling  of  distress  when  the  respiratory  motions  are 
prevented,  —  so  any  unobstructed  tendency  to  action 
discharges  itself  without  the  production  of  much 
cogitative  accompaniment,  and  any  perfectly  fluent 
course  of  thought  awakens  but  little  feeling;  but 
when  the  movement  is  inhibited,  or  when  the  thought 
meets  with  difficulties,  we  experience  distress.  It  is 
only  when  the  distress  is  upon  us  that  we  can  be  said 
to  strive,  to  crave,  or  to  aspire.  When  enjoying 
plenary  freedom  either  in  the  way  of  motion  or  of 
thought,  we  are  in  a  sort  of  anaesthetic  state  in  which 
we  might  say  with  Walt  Whitman,  if  we  cared  to  say 
anything  about  ourselves  at  such  times,  "  I  am  suffi- 
cient as  I  am."  This  feeling  of  the  sufficiency  of  the 
present  moment,  of  its  absoluteness,  —  this  absence 
of  all  need  to  explain  it,  account  for  it,  or  justify  it,  — 
is  what  I  call  the  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  As  soon, 
in  short,  as  we  are  enabled  from  any  cause  whatever 
to  think  with  perfect  fluency,  the  thing  we  think  of 
seems  to  us  pro  tanto  rational. 

Whatever  modes  of  conceiving  the  cosmos  facili- 
tate this  fluency,  produce  the  sentiment  of  rationality. 
Conceived  in  such  modes,  being  vouches  for  itself  and 
needs  no  further  philosophic  formulation.  But  this 
fluency  may  be  obtained  in  various  ways ;  and  first 
I  will  take  up  the  theoretic  way. 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  65 

The  facts  of  the  world  in  their  sensible  diversity 
are  always  before  us,  but  our  theoretic  need  is  that 
they  should  be  conceived  in  a  way  that  reduces  their 
manifoldness  to  simplicity.  Our  pleasure  at  finding 
that  a  chaos  of  facts  is  the  expression  of  a  single 
underlying  fact  is  like  the  relief  of  the  musician  at 
resolving  a  confused  mass  of  sound  into  melodic  or 
harmonic  order.  The  simplified  result  is  handled 
with  far  less  mental  effort  than  the  original  data ;  and 
a  philosophic  conception  of  nature  is  thus  in  no 
metaphorical  sense  a  labor-saving  contrivance.  The 
passion  for  parsimony,  for  economy  of  means  in 
thought,  is  the  philosophic  passion  par  excellence ; 
and  any  character  or  aspect  of  the  world's  phenom- 
ena which  gathers  up  their  diversity  into  monotony 
will  gratify  that  passion,  and  in  the  philosopher's 
mind  stand  for  that  essence  of  things  compared  with 
which  all  their  other  determinations  may  by  him  be 
overlooked. 

More  universality  or  extensiveness  is,  then,  one 
mark  which  the  philosopher's  conceptions  must  pos- 
sess. Unless  they  apply  to  an  enormous  number  of 
cases  they  will  not  bring  him  relief.  The  knowledge 
of  things  by  their  causes,  which  is  often  given  as  a 
definition  of  rational  knowledge,  is  useless  to  him 
unless  the  causes  converge  to  a  minimum  number, 
while  still  producing  the  maximum  number  of  effects. 
The  more  multiple  then  are  the  instances,  the  more 
flowingly  does  his  mind  rove  from  fact  to  fact.  The 
phenomenal  transitions  are  no  real  transitions ;  each 
item  is  the  same  old  friend  with  a  slightly  altered 
dress. 

Who  does  not  feel  the  charm  of  thinking  that  the 
moon  and  the  apple  are,  as  far  as  their  relation  to  the 

5 


66  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

earth  goes,  identical;  of  knowing  respiration  and 
combustion  to  be  one;  of  understanding  that  the 
balloon  rises  by  the  same  law  whereby  the  stone 
sinks ;  of  feeling  that  the  warmth  in  one's  palm  when 
one  rubs  one's  sleeve  is  identical  with  the  motion 
which  the  friction  checks ;  of  recognizing  the  differ- 
ence between  beast  and  fish  to  be  only  a  higher 
degree  of  that  between  human  father  and  son ;  of 
believing  our  strength  when  we  climb  the  mountain 
or  fell  the  tree  to  be  no  other  than  the  strength  of 
the  sun's  rays  which  made  the  corn  grow  out  of 
which  we  got  our  morning  meal? 

But  alongside  of  this  passion  for  simplification 
there  exists  a  sister  passion,  which  in  some  minds  — 
though  they  perhaps  form  the  minority — is  its  rival. 
This  is  the  passion  for  distinguishing;  it  is  the  im- 
pulse to  be  acquainted  with  the  parts  rather  than  to 
comprehend  the  whole.  Loyalty  to  clearness  and 
integrity  of  perception,  dislike  of  blurred  outlines,  of 
vague  identifications,  are  its  characteristics.  It  loves 
to  recognize  particulars  in  their  full  completeness, 
and  the  more  of  these  it  can  carry  the  happier  it  is. 
It  prefers  any  amount  of  incoherence,  abruptness,  and 
fragmentariness  (so  long  as  the  literal  details  of  the 
separate  facts  are  saved)  to  an  abstract  way  of  con- 
ceiving things  that,  while  it  simplifies  them,  dissolves 
away  at  the  same  time  their  concrete  fulness.  Clear- 
ness and  simplicity  thus  set  up  rival  claims,  and  make 
a  real  dilemma  for  the  thinker. 

A  man's  philosophic  attitude  is  determined  by  the 
balance  in  him  of  these  two  cravings.  No  system 
of  philosophy  can  hope  to  be  universally  accepted 
among  men  which  grossly  violates  either  need,  or 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  67 

entirely  subordinates  the  one  to  the  other.  The  fate 
of  Spinosa,  with  his  barren  union  of  all  things  in  one 
substance,  on  the  one  hand ;  that  of  Hume,  with 
his  equally  barren  '  looseness  and  separateness '  of 
everything,  on  the  other,  —  neither  philosopher  own- 
ing any  strict  and  systematic  disciples  to-day,  each 
being  to  posterity  a  warning  as  well  as  a  stimulus, — • 
show  us  that  the  only  possible  philosophy  must  be 
a  compromise  between  an  abstract  monotony  and  a 
concrete  heterogeneity.  But  the  only  way  to  mediate 
between  diversity  and  unity  is  to  class  the  diverse 
items  as  cases  of  a  common  essence  which  you  dis- 
cover in  them.  Classification  of  things  into  exten- 
sive '  kinds '  is  thus  the  first  step ;  and  classification 
of  their  relations  and  conduct  into  extensive  '  laws ' 
is  the  last  step,  in  their  philosophic  unification.  A 
completed  theoretic  philosophy  can  thus  never  be 
anything  more  than  a  completed  classification  of  the 
world's  ingredients ;  and  its  results  must  always  be 
abstract,  since  the  basis  of  every  classification  is 
the  abstract  essence  embedded  in  the  living  fact,  — 
the  rest  of  the  living  fact  being  for  the  time  ignored 
by  the  classifier.  This  means  that  none  of  our 
explanations  are  complete.  They  subsume  things 
under  heads  wider  or  more  familiar;  but  the  last 
heads,  whether  of  things  or  of  their  connections,  are 
mere  abstract  genera,  data  which  we  just  find  in 
things  and  write  down. 

When,  for  example,  we  think  that  we  have  rationally 
explained  the  connection  of  the  facts  A  and  B  by 
classing  both  under  their  common  attribute  x,  it  is 
obvious  that  we  have  really  explained  only  so  much 
of  these  items  as  is  x.  To  explain  the  connection  of 
choke-damp  and  suffocation  by  the  lack  of  oxygen  is 


68  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

to  leave  untouched  all  the  other  peculiarities  both  of 
choke-damp  and  of  suffocation,  —  such  as  convulsions 
and  agony  on  the  one  hand,  density  and  explosibility 
on  the  other.  In  a  word,  so  far  as  A  and  B  contain 
/,  m,  n,  and  o,  p,  q,  respectively,  in  addition  to  x,  they 
are  not  explained  by  x.  Each  additional  particu- 
larity makes  its  distinct  appeal.  A  single  explana- 
tion of  a  fact  only  explains  it  from  a  single  point  of 
view.  The  entire  fact  is  not  accounted  for  until  each 
and  all  of  its  characters  have  been  classed  with  their 
likes  elsewhere.  To  apply  this  now  to  the  case  of 
the  universe,  we  see  that  the  explanation  of  the 
world  by  molecular  movements  explains  it  only  so 
far  as  it  actually  is  such  movements.  To  invoke  the 
'  Unknowable '  explains  only  so  much  as  is  unknow- 
able, '  Thought '  only  so  much  as  is  thought,  '  God ' 
only  so  much  as  is  God.  Which  thought?  Which 
God  ?  —  are  questions  that  have  to  be  answered  by 
bringing  in  again  the  residual  data  from  which  the 
general  term  was  abstracted.  All  those  data  that 
cannot  be  analytically  identified  with  the  attribute 
invoked  as  universal  principle,  remain  as  independent 
kinds  or  natures,  associated  empirically  with  the  said 
attribute  but  devoid  of  rational  kinship  with  it. 

Hence  the  unsatisfactoriness  of  all  our  specula- 
tions. On  the  one  hand,  so  far  as  they  retain  any 
multiplicity  in  their  terms,  they  fail  to  get  us  out  of 
the  empirical  sand-heap  world;  on  the  other,  so  far 
as  they  eliminate  multiplicity  the  practical  man  des- 
pises their  empty  barrenness.  The  most  they  can  say 
is  that  the  elements  of  the  world  are  such  and  such, 
and  that  each  is  identical  with  itself  wherever  found ; 
but  the  question  Where  is  it  found  ?  the  practical  man 
is  left  to  answer  by  his  own  wit.  Which,  of  all  the 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  69 

essences,  shall  here  and  now  be  held  the  essence  of 
this  concrete  thing,  the  fundamental  philosophy  never 
attempts  to  decide.  We  are  thus  led  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  simple  classification  of  things  is,  on 
the  one  hand,  the  best  possible  theoretic  philosophy, 
but  is,  on  the  other,  a  most  miserable  and  inadequate 
substitute  for  the  fulness  of  the  truth.  It  is  a  mon- 
strous abridgment  of  life,  which,  like  all  abridgments 
is  got  by  the  absolute  loss  and  casting  out  of  real 
matter.  This  is  why  so  few  human  beings  truly  care 
for  philosophy.  The  particular  determinations  which 
she  ignores  are  the  real  matter  exciting  needs,  quite 
as  potent  and  authoritative  as  hers.  What  does  the 
moral  enthusiast  care  for  philosophical  ethics?  Why 
does  the  ASstketik  of  every  German  philosopher  ap- 
pear to  the  artist  an  abomination  of  desolation  ? 

Grau,  theurer  Freund,  ist  alle  Theorie 
Und  grim  des  Lebens  goldner  Baum. 

The  entire  man,  who  feels  all  needs  by  turns,  will  take 
nothing  as  an  equivalent  for  life  but  the  fulness  of 
living  itself.  Since  the  essences  of  things  are  as  a 
matter  of  fact  disseminated  through  the  whole  extent 
of  time  and  space,  it  is  in  their  spread-outness  and 
alternation  that  he  will  enjoy  them.  When  weary  of 
the  concrete  clash  and  dust  and  pettiness,  he  will 
refresh  himself  by  a  bath  in  the  eternal  springs,  or 
fortify  himself  by  a  look  at  the  immutable  natures. 
But  he  will  only  be  a  visitor,  not  a  dweller  in  the 
region;  he  will  never  carry  the  philosophic  yoke 
upon  his  shoulders,  and  when  tired  of  the  gray  mono- 
tony of  her  problems  and  insipid  spaciousness  of  her 
results,  will  always  escape  gleefully  into  the  teeming 
and  dramatic  richness  of  the  concrete  world. 


70  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

So  our  study  turns  back  here  to  its  beginning. 
Every  way  of  classifying  a  thing  is  but  a  way  of 
handling  it  for  some  particular  purpose.  Concep- 
tions, '  kinds,'  are  teleological  instruments.  No  ab- 
stract concept  can  be  a  valid  substitute  for  a  concrete 
reality  except  with  reference  to  a  particular  interest 
in  the  conceiver.  The  interest  of  theoretic  rationality, 
the  relief  of  identification,  is  but  one  of  a  thousand 
human  purposes.  When  others  rear  their  heads,  it 
must  pack  up  its  little  bundle  and  retire  till  its  turn 
recurs.  The  exaggerated  dignity  and  value  that 
philosophers  have  claimed  for  their  solutions  is  thus 
greatly  reduced.  The  only  virtue  their  theoretic  con- 
ception need  have  is  simplicity,  and  a  simple  concep- 
tion is  an  equivalent  for  the  world  only  so  far  as  the 
world  is  simple,  —  the  world  meanwhile,  whatever 
simplicity  it  may  harbor,  being  also  a  mightily  com- 
plex affair.  Enough  simplicity  remains,  however, 
and  enough  urgency  in  our  craving  to  reach  it,  to 
make  the  theoretic  function  one  of  the  most  invincible 
of  human  impulses.  The  quest  of  the  fewest  ele- 
ments of  things  is  an  ideal  that  some  will  follow,  as 
long  as  there  are  men  to  think  at  all. 

But  suppose  the  goal  attained.  Suppose  that  at 
last  we  have  a  system  unified  in  the  sense  that  has 
been  explained.  Our  world  can  now  be  conceived 
simply,  and  our  mind  enjoys  the  relief.  Our  univer- 
sal concept  has  made  the  concrete  chaos  rational. 
But  now  I  ask,  Can  that  which  is  the  ground  of  ra- 
tionality in  all  else  be  itself  properly  called  rational? 
It  would  seem  at  first  sight  that  it  might.  One  is 
tempted  at  any  rate  to  say  that,  since  the  craving  for 
rationality  is  appeased  by  the  identification  of  one 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  71 

thing  with  another,  a  datum  which  left  nothing  else 
outstanding  might  quench  that  craving  definitively, 
or  be  rational  in  se.  No  otherness  being  left  to  annoy 
us,  we  should  sit  down  at  peace.  In  other  words,  as 
the  theoretic  tranquillity  of  the  boor  results  from  his 
spinning  no  further  considerations  about  his  chaotic 
universe,  so  any  datum  whatever  (provided  it  were 
simple,  clear,  and  ultimate)  ought  to  banish  puzzle 
from  the  universe  of  the  philosopher  and  confer 
peace,  inasmuch  as  there  would  then  be  for  him 
absolutely  no  further  considerations  to  spin. 

This  in  fact  is  what  some  persons  think.  Professor 
Bain  says,  — 

"  A  difficulty  is  solved,  a  mystery  unriddled,  when  it  can 
be  shown  to  resemble  something  else ;  to  be  an  example  of 
a  fact  already  known.  Mystery  is  isolation,  exception,  or  it 
may  be  apparent  contradiction  :  the  resolution  of  the  mystery 
is  found  in  assimilation,  identity,  fraternity.  When  all  things 
are  assimilated,  so  far  as  assimilation  can  go,  so  far  as  like- 
ness holds,  there  is  an  end  to  explanation ;  there  is  an  end 
to  what  the  mind  can  do,  or  can  intelligently  desire.  .  .  . 
The  path  of  science  as  exhibited  in  modern  ages  is  toward 
generality,  wider  and  wider,  until  we  reach  the  highest,  the 
widest  laws  of  every  department  of  things ;  there  explanation 
is  finished,  mystery  ends,  perfect  vision  is  gained." 

But,  unfortunately,  this  first  answer  will  not  hold. 
Our  mind  is  so  wedded  to  the  process  of  seeing  an 
other  beside  every  item  of  its  experience,  that  when 
the  notion  of  an  absolute  datum  is  presented  to  it,  it 
goes  through  its  usual  procedure  and  remains  point- 
ing at  the  void  beyond,  as  if  in  that  lay  further  matter 
for  contemplation.  In  short,  it  spins  for  itself  the 
further  positive  consideration  of  a  nonentity  envelj 


72  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

oping  the  being  of  its  datum ;  and  as  that  leads  no- 
where, back  recoils  the  thought  toward  its  datum 
again.  But  there  is  no  natural  bridge  between  nonen- 
tity and  this  particular  datum,  and  the  thought  stands 
oscillating  to  and  fro,  wondering  "  Why  was  there  any- 
thing but  nonentity;  why  just  this  universal  datum 
and  not  another?"  and  finds  no  end,  in  wandering 
mazes  lost.  Indeed,  Bain's  words  are  so  untrue  that 
in  reflecting  men  it  is  just  when  the  attempt  to  fuse 
the  manifold  into  a  single  totality  has  been  most 
successful,  when  the  conception  of  the  universe  as  a 
unique  fact  is  nearest  its  perfection,  that  the  craving 
for  further  explanation,  the  ontological  wonder-sick- 
ness, arises  in  its  extremest  form.  As  Schopenhauer 
says,  "  The  uneasiness  which  keeps  the  never-resting 
clock  of  metaphysics  in  motion,  is  the  consciousness 
that  the  non-existence  of  this  world  is  just  as  possible 
as  its  existence." 

The  notion  of  nonentity  may  thus  be  called  the 
parent  of  the  philosophic  craving  in  its  subtilest  and 
profoundest  sense.  Absolute  existence  is  absolute 
mystery,  for  its  relations  with  the  nothing  remain 
unmediated  to  our  understanding.  One  philosopher 
only  has  pretended  to  throw  a  logical  bridge  over 
this  chasm.  Hegel,  by  trying  to  show  that  nonen- 
tity and  concrete  being  are  linked  together  by  a 
series  of  identities  of  a  synthetic  kind,  binds  every- 
thing conceivable  into  a  unity,  with  no  outlying  no- 
tion to  disturb  the  free  rotary  circulation  of  the  mind 
within  its  bounds.  Since  such  unchecked  movement 
gives  the  feeling  of  rationality,  he  must  be  held,  if 
he  has  succeeded,  to  have  eternally  and  absolutely 
quenched  all  rational  demands. 

But  for  those  who  deem  Hegel's  heroic  effort  to 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  73 

have  failed,  nought  remains  but  to  confess  that  when 
all  things  have  been  unified  to  the  supreme  degree, 
the  notion  of  a  possible  other  than  the  actual  may  still 
haunt  our  imagination  and  prey  upon  our  system. 
The  bottom  of  being  is  left  logically  opaque  to  us, 
as  something  which  we  simply  come  upon  and  find, 
and  about  which  (if  we  wish  to  act)  we  should  pause 
and  wonder  as  little  as  possible.  The  philosopher's 
logical  tranquillity  is  thus  in  essence  no  other  than 
the  boor's.  They  differ  only  as  to  the  point  at  which 
each  refuses  to  let  further  considerations  upset  the 
absoluteness  of  the  data  he  assumes.  The  boor  does 
so  immediately,  and  is  liable  at  any- moment  to  the 
ravages  of  many  kinds  of  doubt.  The  philosopher 
does  not  do  so  till  unity  has  been  reached,  and  is 
warranted  against  the  inroads  of  those  considerations, 
but  only  practically,  not  essentially,  secure  from  the 
blighting  breath  of  the  ultimate  Why?  If  he  cannot 
exorcise  this  question,  he  must  ignore  or  blink  it,  and, 
assuming  the  data  of  his  system  as  something  given, 
and  the  gift  as  ultimate,  simply  proceed  to  a  life  of 
contemplation  or  of  action  based  on  it.  There  is  no 
doubt  that  this  acting  on  an  opaque  necessity  is  ac- 
companied by  a  certain  pleasure.  See  the  reverence 
of  Carlyle  for  brute  fact:  "There  is  an  infinite  sig- 
nificance in  fact."  "  Necessity,"  says  Diihring,  and 
he  means  not  rational  but  given  necessity,  "  is  the 
last  and  highest  point  that  we  can  reach.  ...  It  is 
not  only  the  interest  of  ultimate  and  definitive  knowl- 
edge, but  also  that  of  the  feelings,  to  find  a  last  repose 
and  an  ideal  equilibrium  in  an  uttermost  datum  which 
can  simply  not  be  other  than  it  is." 

Such  is  the  attitude  of  ordinary  men  in  their  the- 
ism, God's  fiat  being  in  physics  and  morals  such  an 


74  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

uttermost  datum.  Such  also  is  the  attitude  of  all  hard- 
minded  analysts  and  Verstandesmenschen.  Lotze, 
Renouvier,  and  Hodgson  promptly  say  that  of  expe- 
rience as  a  whole  no  account  can  be  given,  but  nei- 
ther seek  to  soften  the  abruptness  of  the  confession 
nor  to  reconcile  us  with  our  impotence. 

But  mediating  attempts  may  be  made  by  more  mys- 
tical minds.  The  peace  of  rationality  may  be  sought 
through  ecstasy  when  logic  fails.  To  religious  per 
sons  of  every  shade  of  doctrine  moments  come  when 
the  world,  as  it  is,  seems  so  divinely  orderly,  and  the 
acceptance  of  it  by  the  heart  so  rapturously  com- 
plete, that  intellectual  questions  vanish;  nay,  the 
intellect  itself  is  hushed  to  sleep,  —  as  Wordsworth 
says,  "thought  is  not;  in  enjoyment  it  expires." 
Ontological  emotion  so  fills  the  soul  that  ontologi- 
cal  speculation  can  no  longer  overlap  it  and  put 
her  girdle  of  interrogation-marks  round  existence. 
Even  the  least  religious  of  men  must  have  felt  with 
Walt  Whitman,  when  loafing  on  the  grass  on  some 
transparent  summer  morning,  that  "  swiftly  arose  and 
spread  round  him  the  peace  and  knowledge  that  pass 
all  the  argument  of  the  earth."  At  such  moments 
of  energetic  living  we  feel  as  if  there  were  something 
diseased  and  contemptible,  yea  vile,  in  theoretic 
grubbing  and  brooding.  In  the  eye  of  healthy  sense 
the  philosopher  is  at  best  a  learned  fool. 

Since  the  heart  can  thus  wall  out  the  ultimate  irra- 
tionality which  the  head  ascertains,  the  erection  of  its 
procedure  into  a  systematized  method  would  be  a 
philosophic  achievement  of  first-rate  importance.  But 
as  used  by  mystics  hitherto  it  has  lacked  universality, 
being  available  for  few  persons  and  at  few  times,  and 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  75 

even  in  these  being  apt  to  be  followed  by  fits  of  reac- 
tion and  dryness ;  and  if  men  should  agree  that  the 
mystical  method  is  a  subterfuge  without  logical  perti- 
nency, a  plaster  but  no  cure,  and  that  the  idea  of  non- 
entity can  never  be  exorcised,  empiricism  will  be  the 
ultimate  philosophy.  Existence  then  will  be  a  brute 
fact  to  which  as  a  whole  the  emotion  of  ontologic 
wonder  shall  rightfully  cleave,  but  remain  eternally 
unsatisfied.  Then  wonderfulness  or  mysteriousness 
will  be  an  essential  attribute  of  the  nature  of  things, 
and  the  exhibition  and  emphasizing  of  it  will  con- 
tinue to  be  an  ingredient  in  the  philosophic  industry 
of  the  race.  Every  generation  will  produce  its  Job, 
its  Hamlet,  its  Faust,  or  its  Sartor  Resartus. 

With  this  we  seem  to  have  considered  the  possibili- 
ties of  purely  theoretic  rationality.  But  we  saw  at  the 
outset  that  rationality  meant  only  unimpeded  mental 
function.  Impediments  that  arise  in  the  theoretic 
sphere  might  perhaps  be  avoided  if  the  stream  of 
mental  action  should  leave  that  sphere  betimes  and 
pass  into  the  practical.  Let  us  therefore  inquire  what 
constitutes  the  feeling  of  rationality  in  its  practical 
aspect.  If  thought  is  not  to  stand  forever  pointing 
at  the  universe  in  wonder,  if  its  movement  is  to  be 
diverted  from  the  issueless  channel  of  purely  theoretic 
contemplation,  let  us  ask  what  conception  of  the  uni- 
verse will  awaken  active  impulses  capable  of  effecting 
this  diversion.  A  definition  of  the  world  which  will 
give  back  to  the  mind  the  free  motion  which  has  been 
blocked  in  the  purely  contemplative  path  may  so  far 
make  the  world  seem  rational  again. 

Well,  of  two  conceptions  equally  fit  to  satisfy  the 
logical  demand,  that  one  which  awakens  the  active 


76  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

impulses,  or  satisfies  other  aesthetic  demands  better 
than  the  other,  will  be  accounted  the  more  rational 
conception,  and  will  deservedly  prevail. 

There  is  nothing  improbable  in  the  supposition 
that  an  analysis  of  the  world  may  yield  a  number  of 
formulae,  all  consistent  with  the  facts.  In  physical 
science  different  formulae  may  explain  the  phenomena 
equally  well,  —  the  one-fluid  and  the  two-fluid  theories 
of  electricity,  for  example.  Why  may  it  not  be  so 
with  the  world?  Why  may  there  not  be  different 
points  of  view  for  surveying  it,  within  each  of  which 
all  data  harmonize,  and  which  the  observer  may  there- 
fore either  choose  between,  or  simply  cumulate  one 
upon  another?  A  Beethoven  string-quartet  is  truly, 
as  some  one  has  said,  a  scraping  of  horses'  tails  on 
cats'  bowels,  and  may  be  exhaustively  described  in 
such  terms;  but  the  application  of  this  description 
in  no  way  precludes  the  simultaneous  applicability  of 
an  entirely  different  description.  Just  so  a  thorough- 
going interpretation  of  the  world  in  terms  of  me- 
chanical sequence  is  compatible  with  its  being  inter- 
preted teleologically,  for  the  mechanism  itself  may  be 
designed. 

If,  then,  there  were  several  systems  excogitated, 
equally  satisfying  to  our  purely  logical  needs,  they 
would  still  have  to  be  passed  in  review,  and  approved 
or  rejected  by  our  aesthetic  and  practical  nature.  Can 
we  define  the  tests  of  rationality  which  these  parts  of 
our  nature  would  use? 

Philosophers  long  ago  observed  the  remarkable 
fact  that  mere  familiarity  with  things  is  able  to  pro- 
duce a  feeling  of  their  rationality.  The  empiricist 
school  has  been  so  much  struck  by  this  circumstance 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  77 

as  to  have  laid  it  down  that  the  feeling  of  rationality 
and  the  feeling  of  familiarity  are  one  and  the  same 
thing,  and  that  no  other  kind  of  rationality  than 
this  exists.  The  daily  contemplation  of  phenomena 
juxtaposed  in  a  certain  order  begets  an  acceptance 
of  their  connection,  as  absolute  as  the  repose  engen- 
dered by  theoretic  insight  into  their  coherence.  To 
explain  a  thing  is  to  pass  easily  back  to  its  antece- 
dents ;  to  know  it  is  easily  to  foresee  its  consequents. 
Custom,  which  lets  us  do  both,  is  thus  the  source 
of  whatever  rationality  the  thing  may  gain  in  our 
thought. 

In  the  broad  sense  in  which  rationality  was  defined 
at  the  outset  of  this  essay,  it  is  perfectly  apparent 
that  custom  must  be  one  of  its  factors.  We  said  that 
any  perfectly  fluent  and  easy  thought  was  devoid  of 
the  sentiment  of  irrationality.  Inasmuch  then  as  cus- 
tom acquaints  us  with  all  the  relations  of  a  thing,  it 
teaches  us  to  pass  fluently  from  that  thing  to  others, 
and  pro  tanto  tinges  it  with  the  rational  character. 

Now,  there  is  one  particular  relation  of  greater 
practical  importance  than  all  the  rest,  —  I  mean  the 
relation  of  a  thing  to  its  future  consequences.  So 
long  as  an  object  is  unusual,  our  expectations  are 
baffled;  they  are  fully  determined  as  soon  as  it 
becomes  familiar.  I  therefore  propose  this  as  the 
first  practical  requisite  which  a  philosophic  concep- 
tion must  satisfy :  It  must,  in  a  general  way  at  least, 
banish  uncertainty  from  the  future.  The  permanent 
presence  of  the  sense  of  futurity  in  the  mind  has  been 
strangely  ignored  by  most  writers,  but  the  fact  is  that 
our  consciousness  at  a  given  moment  is  never  free 
from  the  ingredient  of  expectancy.  Every  one  knows 
how  when  a  painful  thing  has  to  be  undergone  in  the 


78  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

near  future,  the  vague  feeling  that  it  is  impending  pen- 
etrates all  our  thought  with  uneasiness  and  subtly 
vitiates  our  mood  even  when  it  does  not  control  our 
attention ;  it  keeps  us  from  being  at  rest,  at  home  in 
the  given  present.  The  same  is  true  when  a  great 
happiness  awaits  us.  But  when  the  future  is  neutral 
and  perfectly  certain,  '  we  do  not  mind  it,'  as  we  say, 
but  give  an  undisturbed  attention  to  the  actual.  Let 
now  this  haunting  sense  of  futurity  be  thrown  off  its 
bearings  or  left  without  an  object,  and  immediately 
uneasiness  takes  possession  of  the  mind.  But  in 
every  novel  or  unclassified  experience  this  is  just 
what  occurs ;  we  do  not  know  what  will  come 
next ;  and  novelty  per  se  becomes  a  mental  irritant, 
while  custom  per  se  is  a  mental  sedative,  merely 
because  the  one  baffles  while  the  other  settles  our 
expectations. 

Every  reader  must  feel  the  truth  of  this.  What  is 
meant  by  coming  '  to  feel  at  home '  in  a  new  place, 
or  with  new  people  ?  It  is  simply  that,  at  first,  when 
we  take  up  our  quarters  in  a  new  room,  we  do  not 
know  what  draughts  may  blow  in  upon  our  back, 
what  doors  may  open,  what  forms  may  enter,  what 
interesting  objects  may  be  found  in  cupboards  and 
corners.  When  after  a  few  days  we  have  learned  the 
range  of  all  these  possibilities,  the  feeling  of  strange- 
ness disappears.  And  so  it  does  with  people,  when 
we  have  got  past  the  point  of  expecting  any  essen- 
tially new  manifestations  from  their  character. 

The  utility  of  this  emotional  effect  of  expectation 
is  perfectly  obvious ;  '  natural  selection,'  in  fact,  was 
bound  to  bring  it  about  sooner  or  later.  It  is  of  the 
utmost  practical  importance  to  an  animal  that  he 
should  have  prevision  of  the  qualities  of  the  objects 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  79 

that  surround  him,  and  especially  that  he  should  not 
come  to  rest  in  presence  of  circumstances  that  might 
be  fraught  either  with  peril  or  advantage,  —  go  to 
sleep,  for  example,  on  the  brink  of  precipices,  in  the 
dens  of  enemies,  or  view  with  indifference  some  new- 
appearing  object  that  might,  if  chased,  prove  an 
important  addition  to  the  larder.  Novelty  ought  to 
irritate  him.  All  curiosity  has  thus  a  practical  gene- 
sis. We  need  only  look  at  the  physiognomy  of  a 
dog  or  a  horse  when  a  new  object  comes  into  his 
view,  his  mingled  fascination  and  fear,  to  see  that  the 
element  of  conscious  insecurity  or  perplexed  expecta- 
tion lies  at  the  root  of  his  emotion.  A  dog's  curi- 
osity about  the  movements  of  his  master  or  a  strange 
object  only  ex'tends  as  far  as  the  point  of  deciding 
what  is  going  to  happen  next.  That  settled,  curi- 
osity is  quenched.  The  dog  quoted  by  Darwin, 
whose  behavior  in  presence  of  a  newspaper  moved 
by  the  wind  seemed  to  testify  to  a  sense  '  of  the 
supernatural,'  was  merely  exhibiting  the  irritation  of 
an  uncertain  future.  A  newspaper  which  could  move 
spontaneously  was  in  itself  so  unexpected  that  the 
poor  brute  could  not  tell  what  new  wonders  the  next 
moment  might  bring  forth. 

To  turn  back  now  to  philosophy.  An  ultimate 
datum,  even  though  it  be  logically  unrationalized, 
will,  if  its  quality  is  such  as  to  define  expectancy,  be 
peacefully  accepted  by  the  mind ;  while  if  it  leave 
the  least  opportunity  for  ambiguity  in  the  future,  it 
will  to  that  extent  cause  mental  uneasiness  if  not 
distress.  Now,  in  the  ultimate  explanations  of  the 
universe  which  the  craving  for  rationality  has  elicited 
from  the  human  mind,  the  demands  of  expectancy  to 
be  satisfied  have  always  played  a  fundamental  part 


8o  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

The  term  set  up  by  philosophers  as  primordial  has 
been  one  which  banishes  the  incalculable.  '  Sub- 
stance,' for  example,  means,  as  Kant  says,  das 
Beharrliche,  which  will  be  as  it  has  been,  because  its 
being  is  essential  and  eternal.  And  although  we 
may  not  be  able  to  prophesy  in  detail  the  future 
phenomena  to  which  the  substance  shall  give  rise,  we 
may  set  our  minds  at  rest  in  a  general  way,  when 
we  have  called  the  substance  God,  Perfection,  Love, 
or  Reason,  by  the  reflection  that  whatever  is  in  store 
for  us  can  never  at  bottom  be  inconsistent  with  the 
character  of  this  term ;  so  that  our  attitude  even  to- 
ward the  unexpected  is  in  a  general  sense  defined. 
Take  again  the  notion  of  immortality,  which  for  com- 
mon people  seems  to  be  the  touchstone  of  every 
philosophic  or  religious  creed :  what  is  this  but  a 
way  of  saying  that  the  determination  of  expectancy 
is  the  essential  factor  of  rationality?  The  wrath 
of  science  against  miracles,  of  certain  philosophers 
against  the  doctrine  of  free-will,  has  precisely  the 
same  root,  —  dislike  to  admit  any  ultimate  factor  in 
things  which  may  rout  our  prevision  or  upset  the 
stability  of  our  outlook. 

Anti-substantialist  writers  strangely  overlook  this 
function  in  the  doctrine  of  substance :  "  If  there  be 
such  a  substratum"  says  Mill,  "  suppose  it  at  this 
instant  miraculously  annihilated,  and  let  the  sensa- 
tions continue  to  occur  in  the  same  order,  and  how 
would  the  substratum  be  missed?  By  what  signs 
should  we  be  able  to  discover  that  its  existence  had 
terminated?  Should  we  not  have  as  much  reason  to 
believe  that  it  still  existed  as  we  now  have?  And  if 
we  should  not  then  be  warranted  in  believing  it,  how 
can  we  be  so  now?"  Truly  enough,  if  we  have 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  81 

already  securely  bagged  our  facts  in  a  certain  order, 
we  can  dispense  with  any  further  warrant  for  that 
order.  But  with  regard  to  the  facts  yet  to  come  the 
case  is  far  different.  It  does  not  follow  that  if  sub- 
stance may  be  dropped  from  our  conception  of  the 
irrecoverably  past,  it  need  be  an  equally  empty  com- 
plication to  our  notions  of  the  future.  Even  if  it 
were  true  that,  for  aught  we  know  to  the  contrary, 
the  substance  might  develop  at  any  moment  a  wholly 
new  set  of  attributes,  the  mere  logical  form  of  re- 
ferring things  to  a  substance  would  still  (whether 
rightly  or  wrongly)  remain  accompanied  by  a  feeling 
of  rest  and  future  confidence.  In  spite  of  the  acutest 
nihilistic  criticism,  men  will  therefore  always  have  a 
liking  for  any  philosophy  which  explains  things  per 
substantiam. 

A  very  natural  reaction  against  the  theosophizing 
conceit  and  hide-bound  confidence  in  the  upshot  of 
things,  which  vulgarly  optimistic  minds  display,  has 
formed  one  factor  of  the  scepticism  of  empiricists, 
who  never  cease  to  remind  us  of  the  reservoir  of  pos- 
sibilities alien  to  our  habitual  experience  which  the 
cosmos  may  contain,  and  which,  for  any  warrant  we 
have  to  the  contrary,  may  turn  it  inside  out  to-morrow. 
Agnostic  substantialism  like  that  of  Mr.  Spencer, 
whose  Unknowable  is  not  merely  the  unfathomable 
but  the  absolute-irrational,  on  which,  if  consistently 
represented  in  thought,  it  is  of  course  impossible  to 
count,  performs  the  same  function  of  rebuking  a  cer- 
tain stagnancy  and  smugness  in  the  manner  in  which 
the  ordinary  philistine  feels  his  security.  But  con- 
sidered as  anything  else  than  as  reactions  against  an 
opposite  excess,  these  philosophies  of  uncertainty 
cannot  be  acceptable;  the  general  mind  will  fail  to 

6 


82  Essays  in   Popular  Philosophy. 

some  to  rest  in  their  presence,  and  will  seek  for  solu- 
tions of  a  more  reassuring  kind. 

We  may  then,  I  think,  with  perfect  confidence  lay 
down  as  a  first  point  gained  in  our  inquiry,  that  a 
prime  factor  in  the  philosophic  craving  is  the  desire 
to  have  expectancy  defined ;  and  that  no  philosophy 
will  definitively  triumph  which  in  an  emphatic  manner 
denies  the  possibility  of  gratifying  this  need. 

We  pass  with  this  to  the  next  great  division  of  our 
topic.  It  is  not  sufficient  for  our  satisfaction  merely 
to  know  the  future  as  determined,  for  it  may  be  deter- 
mined in  either  of  many  ways,  agreeable  or  disagree- 
able. For  a  philosophy  to  succeed  on  a  universal 
scale  it  must  define  the  future  congruously  with  our 
spontaneous  powers,  A  philosophy  may  be  unim- 
peachable in  other  respects,  but  either  of  two  defects 
will  be  fatal  to  its  universal  acceptance.  First,  its 
ultimate  principle  must  not  be  one  that  essentially 
baffles  and  disappoints  our  dearest  desires  and  most 
cherished  powers.  A  pessimistic  principle  like  Scho- 
penhauer's incurably  vicious  Will-substance,  or  Hart- 
mann's  wicked  jack-of-all-trades  the  Unconscious,  will 
perpetually  call  forth  essays  at  other  philosophies. 
Incompatibility  of  the  future  with  their  desires  and  ac- 
tive tendencies  is,  in  fact,  to  most  men  a  source  of  more 
fixed  disquietude  than  uncertainty  itself.  Witness 
the  attempts  to  overcome  the  *  problem  of  evil,'  the 
'  mystery  of  pain.'  There  is  no  '  problem  of  good.' 

But  a  second  and  worse  defect  in  a  philosophy 
than  that  of  contradicting  our  active  propensities  is 
to  give  them  no  object  whatever  to  press  against.  A 
philosophy  whose  principle  is  so  incommensurate 
with  our  most  intimate  powers  as  to  deny  them  all 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  83 

relevancy  in  universal  affairs,  as  to  annihilate  their 
motives  at  one  blow,  will  be  even  more  unpopular 
than  pessimism.  Better  face  the  enemy  than  the 
eternal  Void !  This  is  why  materialism  will  always 
fail  of  universal  adoption,  however  well  it  may  fuse 
things  into  an  atomistic  unity,  however  clearly  it  may 
prophesy  the  future  eternity.  For  materialism  denies 
reality  to  the  objects  of  almost  all  the  impulses  which 
we  most  cherish.  The  real  meaning  of  the  impulses, 
it  says,  is  something  which  has  no  emotional  interest 
for  us  whatever.  Now,  what  is  called  '  extradition  ' 
is  quite  as  characteristic  of  our  emotions  as  of  our 
senses :  both  point  to  an  object  as  the  cause  of  the 
present  feeling.  What  an  intensely  objective  refer- 
ence lies  in  fear !  In  like  manner  an  enraptured  man 
and  a  dreary-feeling  man  are  not  simply  aware  of 
their  subjective  states ;  if  they  were,  the  force  of  their 
feelings  would  all  evaporate.  Both  believe  there  is 
outward  cause  why  they  should  feel  as  they  do: 
either,  "It  is  a  glad  world  !  how  good  life  is !  "  or, 
"  What  a  loathsome  tedium  is  existence !  "  Any 
philosophy  which  annihilates  the  validity  of  the  ref- 
erence by  explaining  away  its  objects  or  translating 
them  into  terms  of  no  emotional  pertinency,  leaves  the 
mind  with  little  to  care  or  act  for.  This  is  the  op- 
posite condition  from  that  of  nightmare,  but  when 
acutely  brought  home  to  consciousness  it  produces 
a  kindred  horror.  In  nightmare  we  have  motives 
to  act,  but  no  power ;  here  we  have  powers,  but  no 
motives.  A  nameless  unheimlichkeit  comes  over  us 
at  the  thought  of  there  being  nothing  eternal  in  our 
final  purposes,  in  the  objects  of  those  loves  and  aspi- 
rations which  are  our  deepest  energies.  The  mon- 
strously lopsided  equation  of  the  universe  and  its 


84  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

knower,  which  we  postulate  as  the  ideal  of  cognition, 
is  perfectly  paralleled  by  the  no  less  lopsided  equa- 
tion of  the  universe  and  the  doer.  We  demand  in  it 
a  character  for  which  our  emotions  and  active  pro- 
pensities shall  be  a  match.  Small  as  we  are,  minute 
as  is  the  point  by  which  the  cosmos  impinges  upon 
each  one  of  us,  each  one  desires  to  feel  that  his  reac- 
tion at  that  point  is  congruous  with  the  demands  of 
the  vast  whole,  —  that  he  balances  the  latter,  so  to 
speak,  and  is  able  to  do  what  it  expects  of  him.  But 
as  his  abilities  to  do  lie  wholly  in  the  line  of  his  natu- 
ral propensities ;  as  he  enjoys  reacting  with  such  emo- 
tions as  fortitude,  hope,  rapture,  admiration,  earnest- 
ness, and  the  like;  and  as  he  very  unwillingly  reacts 
with  fear,  disgust,  despair,  or  doubt,  —  a  philosophy 
which  should  only  legitimate  emotions  of  the  latter 
sort  would  be  sure  to  leave  the  mind  a  prey  to  discon- 
tent and  craving. 

It  is  far  too  little  recognized  how  entirely  the  intel- 
lect is  built  up  of  practical  interests.  The  theory  of 
evolution  is  beginning  to  do  very  good  service  by  its 
reduction  of  all  mentality  to  the  type  of  reflex  action. 
Cognition,  in  this  view,  is  but  a  fleeting  moment,  a 
cross-section  at  a  certain  point,  of  what  in  its  totality 
is  a  motor  phenomenon.  In  the  lower  forms  of  life 
no  one  will  pretend  that  cognition  is  anything  more 
than  a  guide  to  appropriate  action.  The  germinal 
question  concerning  things  brought  for  the  first  time 
before  consciousness  is  not  the  theoretic  '  What  is 
that?'  but  the  practical  '  Who  goes  there?  '  or  rather, 
as  Honvicz  has  admirably  put  it,  '  What  is  to  be 
done?'  —  'Was  fang'  ich  an?'  In  all  our  discus- 
sions about  the  intelligence  of  lower  animals,  the  only 
test  we  use  is  that  of  their  acting  as  if  for  a  purpose. 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  85 

Cognition,  in  short,  is  incomplete  until  discharged  in 
act ;  and  although  it  is  true  that  the  later  mental  de- 
velopment, which  attains  its  maximum  through  the 
hypertrophied  cerebrum  of  man,  gives  birth  to  a  vast 
amount  of  theoretic  activity  over  and  above  that 
which  is  immediately  ministerial  to  practice,  yet  the 
earlier  claim  is  only  postponed,  not  effaced,  and  the 
active  nature  asserts  its  rights  to  the  end. 

When  the  cosmos  in  its  totality  is  the  object  offered 
to  consciousness,  the  relation  is  in  no  whit  altered. 
React  on  it  we  must  in  some  congenial  way.  It  was 
a  deep  instinct  in  Schopenhauer  which  led  him  to 
reinforce  his  pessimistic  argumentation  by  a  running 
volley  of  invective  against  the  practical  man  and  his 
requirements.  No  hope  for  pessimism  unless  he  is 
slain ! 

Helmholtz's  immortal  works  on  the  eye  and  ear  are 
to  a  great  extent  little  more  than  a  commentary  on 
the  law  that  practical  utility  wholly  determines  which 
parts  of  our  sensations  we  shall  be  aware  of,  and 
which  parts  we  shall  ignore.  We  notice  or  discrimi- 
nate an  ingredient  of  sense  only  so  far  as  we  depend 
upon  it  to  modify  our  actions.  We  comprehend  a 
thing  when  we  synthetize  it  by  identity  with  another 
thing.  But  the  other  great  department  of  our  under- 
standing, acquaintance  (the  two  departments  being 
recognized  in  all  languages  by  the  antithesis  of  such 
words  as  wissen  and  kennen  ;  scire  and  noscere,  etc.), 
what  is  that  also  but  a  synthesis,  —  a  synthesis  of  a 
passive  perception  with  a  certain  tendency  to  reac- 
tion ?  We  are  acquainted  with  a  thing  as  soon  as  we 
have  learned  how  to  behave  towards  it,  or  how  to 
meet  the  behavior  which  we  expect  from  it.  Up  to 
that  point  it  is  still  '  strange  '  to  us. 


86  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

If  there  be  anything  at  all  in  this  view,  it  follows 
that  however  vaguely  a  philosopher  may  define  the 
ultimate  universal  datum,  he  cannot  be  said  to  leave 
it  unknown  to  us  so  long  as  he  in  the  slightest  degree 
pretends  that  our  emotional  or  active  attitude  toward 
it  should  be  of  one  sort  rather  than  another.  He 
who  says  "  life  is  real,  life  is  earnest,"  however  much 
he  may  speak  of  the  fundamental  mysteriousness  of 
things,  gives  a  distinct  definition  to  that  mysterious- 
ness  by  ascribing  to  it  the  right  to  claim  from  us  the 
particular  mood  called  seriousness,  —  which  means  the 
willingness  to  live  with  energy,  though  energy  bring 
pain.  The  same  is  true  of  him  who  says  that  all  is 
vanity.  For  indefinable  as  the  predicate  '  vanity '  may 
be  in  se,  it  is  clearly  something  that  permits  anaesthe- 
sia, mere  escape  from  suffering,  to  be  our  rule  of  life. 
There  can  be  no  greater  incongruity  than  for  a  disciple 
of  Spencer  to  proclaim  with  one  breath  that  the  sub- 
stance of  things  is  unknowable,  and  with  the  next  that 
the  thought  of  it  should  inspire  us  with  awe,  reverence, 
and  a  willingness  to  add  our  co-operative  push  in  the 
direction  toward  which  its  manifestations  seem  to  be 
drifting.  The  unknowable  may  be  unfathomed,  but 
if  it  make  such  distinct  demands  upon  our  activity  we 
surely  are  not  ignorant  of  its  essential  quality. 

If  we  survey  the  field  of  history  and  ask  what 
feature  all  great  periods  of  revival,  of  expansion  of 
the  human  mind,  display  in  common,  we  shall  find,  I 
think,  simply  this:  that  each  and  all  of  them  have 
said  to  the  human  being,  "  The  inmost  nature  of  the 
reality  is  congenial  to  powers  which  you  possess." 
In  what  did  the  emancipating  message  of  primitive 
Christianity  consist  but  in  the  announcement  that 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  87 

God  recognizes  those  weak  and  tender  impulses 
which  paganism  had  so  rudely  overlooked  ?  Take 
repentance  :  the  man  who  can  do  nothing  rightly  can 
at  least  repent  of  his  failures.  But  for  paganism  this 
faculty  of  repentance  was  a  pure  supernumerary,  a 
straggler  too  late  for  the  fair.  Christianity  took  it, 
and  made  it  the  one  power  within  us  which  appealed 
straight  to  the  heart  of  God.  And  after  the  night  of 
the  middle  ages  had  so  long  branded  with  obloquy 
even  the  generous  impulses  of  the  flesh,  and  defined 
the  reality  to  be  such  that  only  slavish  natures  could 
commune  with  it,  in  what  did  the  sursum  corda  of  the 
platonizing  renaissance  lie  but  in  the  proclamation 
that  the  archetype  of  verity  in  things  laid  claim 
on  the  widest  activity  of  our  whole  aesthetic  being  ? 
What  were  Luther's  mission  and  Wesley's  but  appeals 
to  powers  which  even  the  meanest  of  men  might 
carry  with  them,  —  faith  and  self-despair,  —  but  which 
were  personal,  requiring  no  priestly  intermediation, 
and  which  brought  their  owner  face  to  face  with 
God  ?  What  caused  the  wildfire  influence  of  Rous- 
seau but  the  assurance  he  gave  that  man's  nature  was 
in  harmony  with  the  nature  of  things,  if  only  the 
paralyzing  corruptions  of  custom  would  stand  from 
between?  How  did  Kant  and  Fichte,  Goethe  and 
Schiller,  inspire  their  time  with  cheer,  except  by  say- 
ing, "  Use  all  your  powers ;  that  is  the  only  obedience 
the  universe  exacts  "  ?  And  Carlyle  with  his  gospel 
of  work,  of  fact,  of  veracity,  how  does  he  move  us 
except  by  saying  that  the  universe  imposes  no  tasks 
upon  us  but  such  as  the  most  humble  can  perform  ? 
Emerson's  creed  that  everything  that  ever  was  or  will 
be  is  here  in  the  enveloping  now ;  that  man  has  but 
to  obey  himself,  —  "  He  who  will  rest  in  what  he  tst 


88  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

is  a  part  of  destiny,"  —  is  in  like  manner  nothing  but 
an  exorcism  of  all  scepticism  as  to  the  pertinency 
of  one's  natural  faculties. 

In  a  word,  "  Son  of  Man,  stand  upon  thy  feet  and 
I  will  speak  unto  thee !  "  is  the  only  revelation  of 
truth  to  which  the  solving  epochs  have  helped  the 
disciple.  But  that  has  been  enough  to  satisfy  the 
greater  part  of  his  rational  need,  hi  se  and  per  se 
the  universal  essence  has  hardly  been  more  defined 
by  any  of  these  formulas  than  by  the  agnostic  x  ; 
but  the  mere  assurance  that  my  powers,  such  as  they 
are,  are  not  irrelevant  to  it,  but  pertinent;  that  it 
speaks  to  them  and  will  in  some  way  recognize  their 
reply ;  that  I  can  be  a  match  for  it  if  I  will,  and  not  a 
footless  waif,  —  suffices  to  make  it  rational  to  my  feel- 
ing in  the  sense  given  above.  Nothing  could  be  more 
absurd  than  to  hope  for  the  definitive  triumph  of  any 
philosophy  which  should  refuse  to  legitimate,  and  to 
legitimate  in  an  emphatic  manner,  the  more  powerful 
of  our  emotional  and  practical  tendencies.  Fatalism, 
whose  solving  word  in  all  crises  of  behavior  is  "  all 
striving  is  vain,"  will  never  reign  supreme,  for  the 
impulse  to  take  life  strivingly  is  indestructible  in  the 
race.  Moral  creeds  which  speak  to  that  impulse  will 
be  widely  successful  in  spite  of  inconsistency,  vague- 
ness, and  shadowy  determination  of  expectancy.  Man 
needs  a  rule  for  his  will,  and  will  invent  one  if  one  be 
not  given  him. 

But  now  observe  a  most  important  consequence. 
Men's  active  impulses  are  so  differently  mixed  that  a 
philosophy  fit  in  this  respect  for  Bismarck  will  almost 
certainly  be  unfit  for  a  valetudinarian  poet.  In  other 
words,  although  one  can  lay  down  in  advance  the 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  89 

rule  that  a  philosophy  which  utterly  denies  all  funda- 
mental ground  for  seriousness,  for  effort,  for  hope, 
which  says  the  nature  of  things  is  radically  alien  to 
human  nature,  can  never  succeed,  —  one  cannot  in 
advance  say  what  particular  dose  of  hope,  or  of  gnos- 
ticism of  the  nature  of  things,  the  definitely  successful 
philosophy  shall  contain.  In  short,  it  is  almost  certain 
that  personal  temperament  will  here  make  itself  felt, 
and  that  although  all  men  will  insist  on  being  spoken 
to  by  the  universe  in  some  way,  few  will  insist  on  being 
spoken  to  in  just  the  same  way.  We  have  here,  in 
short,  the  sphere  of  what  Matthew  Arnold  likes  to 
call  Aberglaube,  legitimate,  inexpugnable,  yet  doomed 
to  eternal  variations  and  disputes. 

Take  idealism  and  materialism  as  examples  of  what 
I  mean,  and  suppose  for  a  moment  that  both  give  a 
conception  of  equal  theoretic  clearness  and  consist- 
ency, and  that  both  determine  our  expectations  equally 
well.  Idealism  will  be  chosen  by  a  man  of  one  emo- 
tional constitution,  materialism  by  another.  At  this 
very  day  all  sentimental  natures,  fond  of  conciliation 
and  intimacy,  tend  to  an  idealistic  faith.  Why?  Be- 
cause idealism  gives  to  the  nature  of  things  such  kin- 
ship with  our  personal  selves.  Our  own  thoughts  are 
what  we  are  most  at  home  with,  what  we  are  least 
afraid  of.  To  say  then  that  the  universe  essentially  is 
thought,  is  to  say  that  I  myself,  potentially  at  least, 
am  all.  There  is  no  radically  alien  corner,  but  an  all- 
pervading  intimacy.  Now,  in  certain  sensitively  ego- 
tistic minds  this  conception  of  reality  is  sure  to  put 
on  a  narrow,  close,  sick-room  air.  Everything  senti- 
mental and  priggish  will  be  consecrated  by  it.  That 
element  in  reality  which  every  strong  man  of  com- 
mon-sense willingly  feels  there  because  it  calls  forth 


90  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

powers  that  he  owns  —  the  rough,  harsh,  sea-wave, 
north-wind  element,  the  denier  of  persons,  the  democ- 
ratizer —  is  banished  because  it  jars  too  much  on  the 
desire  for  communion.  Now,  it  is  the  very  enjoyment 
of  this  element  that  throws  many  men  upon  the  mate- 
rialistic or  agnostic  hypothesis,  as  a  polemic  reaction 
against  the  contrary  extreme.  They  sicken  at  a  life 
wholly  constituted  of  intimacy.  There  is  an  over- 
powering desire  at  moments  to  escape  personality,  to 
revel  in  the  action  of  forces  that  have  no  respect  for 
our  ego,  to  let  the  tides  flow,  even  though  they  flow 
over  us.  The  strife  of  these  two  kinds  of  mental  tem- 
per will,  I  think,  always  be  seen  in  philosophy.  Some 
men  will  keep  insisting  on  the  reason,  the  atonement, 
that  lies  in  the  heart  of  things,  and  that  we  can  act 
with;  others,  on  the  opacity  of  brute  fact  that  we 
must  react  against. 

Now,  there  is  one  element  of  our  active  nature 
which  the  Christian  religion  has  emphatically  recog- 
nized, but  which  philosophers  as  a  rule  have  with 
great  insincerity  tried  to  huddle  out  of  sight  in  their 
pretension  to  found  systems  of  absolute  certainty.  I 
mean  the  element  of  faith.  Faith  means  belief  in 
something  concerning  which  doubt  is  still  theoreti- 
cally possible ;  and  as  the  test  of  belief  is  willingness 
to  act,  one  may  say  that  faith  is  the  readiness  to  act 
in  a  cause  the  prosperous  issue  of  which  is  not  certified 
to  us  in  advance.  It  is  in  fact  the  same  moral  quality 
which  we  call  courage  in  practical  affairs ;  and  there 
will  be  a  very  widespread  tendency  in  men  of  vigor- 
ous nature  to  enjoy  a  certain  amount  of  uncertainty 
in  their  philosophic  creed,  just  as  risk  lends  a  zest  to 
worldly  activity.  Absolutely  certified  philosophies 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  91 

seeking  the  inconcussum  are  fruits  of  mental  natures 
in  which  the  passion  for  identity  (which  we  saw  to  be 
but  one  factor  of  the  rational  appetite)  plays  an  ab- 
normally exclusive  part.  In  the  average  man,  on  the 
contrary,  the  power  to  trust,  to  risk  a  little  beyond  the 
literal  evidence,  is  an  essential  function.  Any  mode 
of  conceiving  the  universe  which  makes  an  appeal  to 
this  generous  power,  and  makes  the  man  seem  as  if 
he  were  individually  helping  to  create  the  actuality 
of  the  truth  whose  metaphysical  reality  he  is  willing 
to  assume,  will  be  sure  to  be  responded  to  by  large 
numbers. 

The  necessity  of  faith  as  an  ingredient  in  our  men- 
tal attitude  is  strongly  insisted  on  by  the  scientific 
philosophers  of  the  present  day ;  but  by  a  singularly 
arbitrary  caprice  they  say  that  it  is  only  legitimate 
when  used  in  the  interests  of  one  particular  propo- 
sition,—  the  proposition,  namely,  that  the  course  of 
nature  is  uniform.  That  nature  will  follow  to-mor- 
row the  same  laws  that  she  follows  to-day  is,  they  all 
admit,  a  truth  which  no  man  can  know ;  but  in  the 
interests  of  cognition  as  well  as  of  action  we  must 
postulate  or  assume  it.  As  Helmholtz  says :  "  Hier 
gilt  nur  der  eine  Rath :  vertraue  und  handle  !  "  And 
Professor  Bain  urges  :  "  Our  only  error  is  in  propos- 
ing to  give  any  reason  or  justification  of  the  postu- 
late, or  to  treat  it  as  otherwise  than  begged  at  the 
very  outset." 

With  regard  to  all  other  possible  truths,  however, 
a  number  of  our  most  influential  contemporaries 
think  that  an  attitude  of  faith  is  not  only  illogical  but 
shameful.  Faith  in  a  religious  dogma  for  which  there 
is  no  outward  proof,  but  which  we  are  tempted  to 
postulate  for  our  emotional  interests,  just  as  we  pos- 


92  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

tulate  the  uniformity  of  nature  for  our  intellectual 
interests,  is  branded  by  Professor  Huxley  as  "  the 
lowest  depth  of  immorality."  Citations  of  this  kind 
from  leaders  of  the  modern  Aufkldrung  might  be 
multiplied  almost  indefinitely.  Take  Professor  Clif- 
ford's article  on  the  '  Ethics  of  Belief.'  He  calls  it 
'  guilt '  and  '  sin '  to  believe  even  the  truth  without 
'  scientific  evidence.'  But  what  is  the  use  of  being  a 
genius,  unless  with  the  same  scientific  evidence  as 
other  men,  one  can  reach  more  truth  than  they? 
Why  does  Clifford  fearlessly  proclaim  his  belief  in  the 
conscious-automaton  theory,  although  the  '  proofs '  be- 
fore him  are  the  same  which  make  Mr.  Lewes  reject 
it?  Why  does  he  believe  in  primordial  units  of  mind- 
stuff'  on  evidence  which  would  seem  quite  worthless 
to  Professor  Bain?  Simply  because,  like  every  human 
being  of  the  slightest  mental  originality,  he  is  pecu- 
liarly sensitive  to  evidence  that  bears  in  some  one  di- 
rection. It  is  utterly  hopeless  to  try  to  exorcise  such 
sensitiveness  by  calling  it  the  disturbing  subjective 
factor,  and  branding  it  as  the  root  of  all  evil.  '  Sub- 
jective '  be  it  called  !  and  '  disturbing '  to  those  whom 
it  foils !  But  if  it  helps  those  who,  as  Cicero  says, 
"  vim  naturae  magis  sentiunt,"  it  is  good  and  not  evil. 
Pretend  what  we  may,  the  whole  man  within  us  is  at 
work  when  we  form  our  philosophical  opinions.  In- 
tellect, will,  taste,  and  passion  co-operate  just  as  they 
do  in  practical  affairs ;  and  lucky  it  is  if  the  passion 
be  not  something  as  petty  as  a  love  of  personal  con- 
quest over  the  philosopher  across  the  way.  The  ab- 
surd abstraction  of  an  intellect  verbally  formulating 
all  its  evidence  and  carefully  estimating  the  probabil- 
ity thereof  by  a  vulgar  fraction  by  the  size  of  whose 
denominator  and  numerator  alone  it  is  swayed,  is 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  93 

ideally  as  inept  as  it  is  actually  impossible.  It  is  al- 
most incredible  that  men  who  are  themselves  working 
philosophers  should  pretend  that  any  philosophy  can 
be,  or  ever  has  been,  constructed  without  the  help  of 
personal  preference,  belief,  or  divination.  How  have 
they  succeeded  in  so  stultifying  their  sense  for  the  liv- 
ing facts  of  human  nature  as  not  to  perceive  that  every 
philosopher,  or  man  of  science  either,  whose  initiative 
counts  for  anything  in  the  evolution  of  thought,  has 
taken  his  stand  on  a  sort  of  dumb  conviction  that  the 
truth  must  lie  in  one  direction  rather  than  another, 
and  a  sort  of  preliminary  assurance  that  his  notion 
can  be  made  to  work;  and  has  borne  his  best  fruit 
in  trying  to  make  it  work?  These  mental  instincts 
in  different  men  are  the  spontaneous  variations  upon 
which  the  intellectual  struggle  for  existence  is  based. 
The  fittest  conceptions  survive,  and  with  them  the 
names  of  their  champions  shining  to  all  futurity. 

The  coil  is  about  us,  struggle  as  we  may.  The 
only  escape  from  faith  is  mental  nullity.  What  we 
enjoy  most  in  a  Huxley  or  a  Clifford  is  not  the  pro- 
fessor with  his  learning,  but  the  human  personality 
ready  to  go  in  for  what  it  feels  to  be  right,  in  spite  of 
all  appearances.  The  concrete  man  has  but  one  inter- 
est, —  to  be  right.  That  for  him  is  the  art  of  all  arts, 
and  all  means  are  fair  which  help  him  to  it.  Naked 
he  is  flung  into  the  world,  and  between  him  and  nature 
there  are  no  rules  of  civilized  warfare.  The  rules  of 
the  scientific  game,  burdens  of  proof,  presumptions, 
experimenta  cruets,  complete  inductions,  and  the  like, 
are  only  binding  on  those  who  enter  that  game.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  we  all  more  or  less  do  enter  it,  because 
it  helps  us  to  our  end.  But  if  the  means  presume  to 
frustrate  the  end  and  call  us  cheats  for  being  right  in 


94  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

advance  of  their  slow  aid,  by  guesswork  or  by  hook 
or  crook,  what  shall  we  say  of  them?  Were  all  of 
Clifford's  works,  except  the  Ethics  of  Belief,  forgot- 
ten, he  might  well  figure  in  future  treatises  on  psy- 
chology in  place  of  the  somewhat  threadbare  instance 
of  the  miser  who  has  been  led  by  the  association  of 
ideas  to  prefer  his  gold  to  all  the  goods  he  might  buy 
therewith. 

In  short,  if  I  am  born  with  such  a  superior  general 
reaction  to  evidence  that  I  can  guess  right  and  act 
accordingly,  and  gain  all  that  comes  of  right  action, 
while  my  less  gifted  neighbor  (paralyzed  by  his  scru- 
ples and  waiting  for  more  evidence  which  he  dares 
not  anticipate,  much  as  he  longs  to)  still  stands 
shivering  on  the  brink,  by  what  law  shall  I  be  for- 
bidden to  reap  the  advantages  of  my  superior  native 
sensitiveness?  Of  course  I  yield  to  my  belief  in  such 
a  case  as  this  or  distrust  it,  alike  at  my  peril,  just  as 
I  do  in  any  of  the  great  practical  decisions  of  life. 
If  my  inborn  faculties  are  good,  I  am  a  prophet ;  if 
poor,  I  am  a  failure :  nature  spews  me  out  of  her 
mouth,  and  there  is  an  end  of  me.  In  the  total  game 
of  life  we  stake  our  persons  all  the  while ;  and  if  in  its 
theoretic  part  our  persons  will  help  us  to  a  conclu- 
sion, surely  we  should  also  stake  them  there,  how- 
ever inarticulate  they  may  be.1 

1  At  most,  the  command  laid  upon  us  by  science  to  believe  nothing 
not  yet  verified  by  the  senses  is  a  prudential  rule  intended  to  maxim- 
ize our  right  thinking  and  minimize  our  errors  in  the  long  run.  In  the 
particular  instance  we  must  frequently  lose  truth  by  obeying  it ;  but 
on  the  whole  we  are  safer  if  we  follow  it  consistently,  for  we  are  sure  to 
cover  our  losses  with  our  gains.  It  is  like  those  gambling  and  insur- 
ance rules  based  on  probability,  in  which  we  secure  ourselves  against 
losses  in  detail  by  hedging  on  the  total  run.  But  this  hedging  philos- 
ophy requires  that  long  run  should  be  there ;  and  this  makes  it  iuap- 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  95 

But  in  being  myself  so  very  articulate  in  proving 
what  to  all  readers  with  a  sense  for  reality  will  seem 
a  platitude,  am  I  not  wasting  words?  We  cannot 
live  or  think  at  all  without  some  degree  of  faith. 
Faith  is  synonymous  with  working  hypothesis.  The 
only  difference  is  that  while  some  hypotheses  can  be 
refuted  in  five  minutes,  others  may  defy  ages.  A 
chemist  who  conjectures  that  a  certain  wall-paper 
contains  arsenic,  and  has  faith  enough  to  lead  him 
to  take  the  trouble  to  put  some  of  it  into  a  hydro- 
gen bottle,  finds  out  by  the  results  of  his  action 
whether  he  was  right  or  wrong.  But  theories  like 
that  of  Darwin,  or  that  of  the  kinetic  constitution  of 
matter,  may  exhaust  the  labors  of  generations  in  their 
corroboration,  each  tester  of  their  truth  proceeding  in 
this  simple  way,  —  that  he  acts  as  if  it  were  true,  and 
expects  the  result  to  disappoint  him  if  his  assumption 
is  false.  The  longer  disappointment  is  delayed,  the 
stronger  grows  his  faith  in  his  theory. 

Now,  in  such  questions  as  God,  immortality,  abso- 
lute morality,  and  free-will,  no  non-papal  believer  at 
the  present  day  pretends  his  faith  to  be  of  an  essen- 
tially different  complexion ;  he  can  always  doubt  his 
creed.  But  his  intimate  persuasion  is  that  the  odds 
in  its  favor  are  strong  enough  to  warrant  him  in  act- 
ing all  along  on  the  assumption  of  its  truth.  His 
corroboration  or  repudiation  by  the  nature  of  things 
may  be  deferred  until  the  day  of  judgment.  The 

plicable  to  the  question  of  religious  faith  as  the  latter  comes  home 
to  the  individual  man.  He  plays  the  game  of  life  not  to  escape 
losses,  for  he  brings  nothing  with  him  to  lose ;  he  plays  it  for  gains ; 
and  it  is  now  or  never  with  him,  for  the  long  run  which  exists  in- 
deed for  humanity,  is  not  there  for  him.  Let  him  doubt,  believe,  01 
deny,  he  runs  his  risk,  and  has  the  natural  right  to  choose  which 
one  it  shall  be. 


96  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

uttermost  he  now  means  is  something  like  this :  "  I 
expect  then  to  triumph  with  tenfold  glory ;  but  if  it 
should  turn  out,  as  indeed  it  may,  that  I  have  spent 
my  days  in  a  fool's  paradise,  why,  better  have  been 
the  dupe  of  such  a  dreamland  than  the  cunning  reader 
of  a  world  like  that  which  then  beyond  all  doubt 
unmasks  itself  to  view."  In  short,  we  go  in  against 
materialism  very  much  as  we  should  go  in,  had  we 
a  chance,  against  the  second  French  empire  or  the 
Church  of  Rome,  or  any  other  system  of  things  toward 
which  our  repugnance  is  vast  enough  to  determine 
energetic  action,  but  too  vague  to  issue  in  distinct  ar- 
gumentation. Our  reasons  are  ludicrously  incommen- 
surate with  the  volume  of  our  feeling,  yet  on  the  latter 
we  unhesitatingly  act. 

Now,  I  wish  to  show  what  to  my  knowledge  has 
never  been  clearly  pointed  out,  that  belief  (as  meas- 
ured by  action)  not  only  does  and  must  continually 
outstrip  scientific  evidence,  but  that  there  is  a  certain 
class  of  truths  of  whose  reality  belief  is  a  factor  as 
well  as  a  confessor;  and  that  as  regards  this  class  of 
truths  faith  is  not  only  licit  and  pertinent,  but  essen- 
tial and  indispensable.  The  truths  cannot  become 
true  till  our  faith  has  made  them  so. 

Suppose,  for  example,  that  I  am  climbing  in  the 
Alps,  and  have  had  the  ill-luck  to  work  myself  into  a 
position  from  which  the  only  escape  is  by  a  terrible 
leap.  Being  without  similar  experience,  I  have  no 
evidence  of  my  ability  to  perform  it  successfully;  but 
hope  and  confidence  in  myself  make  me  sure  I  shall 
not  miss  my  aim,  and  nerve  my  feet  to  execute  what 
without  those  subjective  emotions  would  perhaps  have 
been  impossible.  But  suppose  that,  on  the  contrary, 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  97 

the  emotions  of  fear  and  mistrust  preponderate ;  or 
suppose  that,  having  just  read  the  Ethics  of  Belief, 
I  feel  it  would  be  sinful  to  act  upon  an  assumption  un- 
verified by  previous  experience,  —  why,  then  I  shall 
hesitate  so  long  that  at  last,  exhausted  and  trembling, 
and  launching  myself  in  a  moment  of  despair,  I  miss 
my  foothold  and  roll  into  the  abyss.  In  this  case 
(and  it  is  one  of  an  immense  class)  the  part  of  wis- 
dom clearly  is  to  believe  what  one  desires ;  for  the  be- 
lief is  one  of  the  indispensable  preliminary  conditions 
of  the  realization  of  its  object.  There  are  then  cases 
where  faith  creates  its  own  verification.  Believe, 
and  you  shall  be  right,  for  you  shall  save  yourself; 
doubt,  and  you  shall  again  be  right,  for  you  shall  per- 
ish. The  only  difference  is  that  to  believe  is  greatly 
to  your  advantage. 

The  future  movements  of  the  stars  or  the  facts  of 
past  history  are  determined  now  once  for  all,  whether 
I  like  them  or  not.  They  are  given  irrespective  of 
my  wishes,  and  in  all  that  concerns  truths  like  these 
subjective  preference  should  have  no  part ;  it  can  only 
obscure  the  judgment.  But  in  every  fact  into  which 
there  enters  an  element  of  personal  contribution  on 
my  part,  as  soon  as  this  personal  contribution  demands 
a  certain  degree  of  subjective  energy  which,  in  its  turn, 
calls  for  a  certain  amount  of  faith  in  the  result,  —  so 
that,  after  all,  the  future  fact  is  conditioned  by  my 
present  faith  in  it,  —  how  trebly  asinine  would  it  be 
for  me  to  deny  myself  the  use  of  the  subjective  method, 
the  method  of  belief  based  on  desire  ! 

In  every  proposition  whose  bearing  is  universal 
(and  such  are  all  the  propositions  of  philosophy),  the 
acts  of  the  subject  and  their  consequences  throughout 
eternity  should  be  included  in  the  formula.  If  M 

7 


98  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

represent  the  entire  world  minus  the  reaction  of  the 
thinker  upon  it,  and  if  M  +  x  represent  the  absolutely 
total  matter  of  philosophic  propositions  (x  standing  for 
the  thinker's  reaction  and  its  results), — what  would  be 
a  universal  truth  if  the  term  x  were  of  one  complexion, 
might  become  egregious  error  if  x  altered  its  charac- 
ter. Let  it  not  be  said  that  x  is  too  infinitesimal  a 
component  to  change  the  character  of  the  immense 
whole  in  which  it  lies  imbedded.  Everything  depends 
on  the  point  of  view  of  the  philosophic  proposition 
in  question.  If  we  have  to  define  the  universe  from 
the  point  of  view  of  sensibility,  the  critical  material 
for  our  judgment  lies  in  the  animal  kingdom,  insigni- 
ficant as  that  is,  quantitatively  considered.  The  moral 
definition  of  the  world  may  depend  on  phenomena 
more  restricted  still  in  range.  In  short,  many  a  long 
phrase  may  have  its  sense  reversed  by  the  addition  of 
three  letters,  n-o-t;  many  a  monstrous  mass  have  its 
unstable  equilibrium  discharged  one  way  or  the  other 
by  a  feather  weight  that  falls. 

Let  us  make  this  clear  by  a  few  examples.  The  phi- 
losophy of  evolution  offers  us  to-day  a  new  criterion 
to  serve  as  an  ethical  test  between  right  and  wrong. 
Previous  criteria,  it  says,  being  subjective,  have  left 
us  still  floundering  in  variations  of  opinion  and  the 
status  belli.  Here  is  a  criterion  which  is  objective 
and  fixed  :  That  is  to  be  called  good  which  is  destined 
to  prevail  or  survive.  But  we  immediately  see  that  this 
standard  can  only  remain  objective  by  leaving  myself 
and  my  conduct  out.  If  what  prevails  and  survives 
does  so  by  my  help,  and  cannot  do  so  without  that 
help  ;  if  something  else  will  prevail  in  case  I  alter  my 
conduct,  —  how  can  I  possibly  now,  conscious  of  alter- 
native courses  of  action  open  before  me,  either  of  which 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  99 

I  may  suppose  capable  of  altering  the  path  of  events, 
decide  which  course  to  take  by  asking  what  path 
events  will  follow?  If  they  follow  my  direction,  evi- 
dently my  direction  cannot  wait  on  them.  The  only 
possible  manner  in  which  an  evolutionist  can  use  his 
standard  is  the  obsequious  method  of  forecasting  the 
course  society  would  take  but  for  him,  and  then  put- 
ting an  extinguisher  on  all  personal  idiosyncrasies  of 
desire  and  interest,  and  with  bated  breath  and  tiptoe 
tread  following  as  straight  as  may  be  at  the  tail,  and 
bringing  up  the  rear  of  everything.  Some  pious  crea- 
tures may  find  a  pleasure  in  this ;  but  not  only  does 
it  violate  our  general  wish  to  lead  and  not  to  follow 
(a  wish  which  is  surely  not  immoral  if  we  but  lead 
aright),  but  if  it  be  treated  as  every  ethical  principle 
must  be  treated,  —  namely,  as  a  rule  good  for  all  men 
alike,  —  its  general  observance  would  lead  to  its  prac- 
tical refutation  by  bringing  about  a  general  dead- 
lock. Each  good  man  hanging  back  and  waiting  for 
orders  from  the  rest,  absolute  stagnation  would  ensue. 
Happy,  then,  if  a  few  unrighteous  ones  contribute  an 
initiative  which  sets  things  moving  again  ! 

All  this  is  no  caricature.  That  the  course  of 
destiny  may  be  altered  by  individuals  no  wise  evolu- 
tionist ought  to  doubt.  Everything  for  him  has 
small  beginnings,  has  a  bud  which  may  be  '  nipped,' 
and  nipped  by  a  feeble  force.  Human  races  and 
tendencies  follow  the  law,  and  have  also  small  begin- 
nings. The  best,  according  to  evolution,  is  that 
which  has  the  biggest  endings.  Now,  if  a  present 
race  of  men,  enlightened  in  the  evolutionary  philoso- 
phy, and  able  to  forecast  the  future,  were  able  to  dis- 
cern in  a  tribe  arising  near  them  the  potentiality  of 
future  supremacy;  were  able  to  see  that  their  own 


I  oo          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

race  would  eventually  be  wiped  out  of  existence  by 
the  new-comers  if  the  expansion  of  these  were  left 
unmolested,  —  these  present  sages  would  have  two 
courses  open  to  them,  either  perfectly  in  harmony 
with  the  evolutionary  test:  Strangle  the  new  race 
now,  and  ours  survives;  help  the  new  race,  and  it 
survives.  In  both  cases  the  action  is  right  as  mea- 
sured by  the  evolutionary  standard,  —  it  is  action  for 
the  winning  side. 

Thus  the  evolutionist  foundation  of  ethics  is  purely 
objective  only  to  the  herd  of  nullities  whose  votes 
count  for  zero  in  the  march  of  events.  But  for  others, 
leaders  of  opinion  or  potentates,  and  in  general  those 
to  whose  actions  position  or  genius  gives  a  far-reaching 
import,  and  to  the  rest  of  us,  each  in  his  measure,  — 
whenever  we  espouse  a  cause  we  contribute  to  the  de- 
termination of  the  evolutionary  standard  of  right.  The 
truly  wise  disciple  of  this  school  will  then  admit  faith 
as  an  ultimate  ethical  factor.  Any  philosophy  which 
makes  such  questions  as,  What  is  the  ideal  type  of 
humanity?  What  shall  be  reckoned  virtues?  What 
conduct  is  good?  depend  on  the  question,  What  is 
going  to  succeed  ?  —  must  needs  fall  back  on  personal 
belief  as  one  of  the  ultimate  conditions  of  the  truth. 
For  again  and  again  success  depends  on  energy  of 
act ;  energy  again  depends  on  faith  that  we  shall  not 
fail ;  and  that  faith  in  turn  on  the  faith  that  we  are 
right,  —  which  faith  thus  verifies  itself. 

Take  as  an  example  the  question  of  optimism  or 
pessimism,  which  makes  so  much  noise  just  now  in 
Germany.  Every  human  being  must  sometime  de- 
cide for  himself  whether  life  is  worth  living.  Sup- 
pose that  in  looking  at  the  world  and  seeing  how 
full  it  is  of  misery,  of  old  age,  of  wickedness  and 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  101 

pain,  and  how  unsafe  is  his  own  future,  he  yields  to 
the  pessimistic  conclusion,  cultivates  disgust  and  dread, 
ceases  striving,  and  finally  commits  suicide.  He  thus 
adds  to  the  mass  M  of  .mundane  phenomena,  inde- 
pendent of  his  subjectivity,  the  subjective  comple- 
ment x,  which  makes  of  the  whole  an  utterly  black 
picture  illumined  by  no  gleam  of  good.  Pessimism 
completed,  verified  by  his  moral  reaction  and  the  deed 
in  which  this  ends,  is  true  beyond  a  doubt.  M  +  x 
expresses  a  state  of  things  totally  bad.  The  man's 
belief  supplied  all  that  was  lacking  to  make  it  so,  and 
now  that  it  is  made  so  the  belief  was  right. 

But  now  suppose  that  with  the  same  evil  facts  M, 
the  man's  reaction  x  is  exactly  reversed ;  suppose 
that  instead  of  giving  way  to  the  evil  he  braves  it, 
and  finds  a  sterner,  more  wonderful  joy  than  any  .pas- 
sive pleasure  can  yield  in  triumphing  over  pain  and 
defying  fear ;  suppose  he  does  this  successfully,  and 
however  thickly  evils  crowd  upon  him  proves  his 
dauntless  subjectivity  to  be  more  than  their  match, — 
will  not  every  one  confess  that  the  bad  character  of 
the  M  is  here  the  conditio  sine  qua  non  of  the  good 
character  of  the  x?  Will  not  every  one  instantly  de- 
clare a  world  fitted  only  for  fair-weather  human  beings 
susceptible  of  every  passive  enjoyment,  but  without 
independence,  courage,  or  fortitude,  to  be  from  a 
moral  point  of  view  incommensurably  inferior  to  a 
world  framed  to  elicit  from  the  man  every  form  of 
triumphant  endurance  and  conquering  moral  energy? 
As  James  Hinton  says,  — 

"  Little  inconveniences,  exertions,  pains,  —  these  are  the 
only  things  in  which  we  rightly  feel  our  life  at  all.  If  these 
be  not  there,  existence  becomes  worthless,  or  worse;  suc« 


IO2         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

cess  in  putting  them  all  away  is  fatal.  So  it  is  men  engage 
in  athletic  sports,  spend  their  holidays  in  climbing  up  moun- 
tains, find  nothing  so  enjoyable  as  that  which  taxes  their 
endurance  and  their  energy.  This  is  the  way  we  are  made, 
I  say.  It  may  or  may  not  be  a  mystery  or  a  paradox ;  it  is 
a  fact.  Now,  this  enjoyment  in  endurance  is  just  according 
to  the  intensity  of  life  :  the  more  physical  vigor  and  balance, 
the  more  endurance  can  be  made  an  element  of  satisfaction. 
A  sick  man  cannot  stand  it.  The  line  of  enjoyable  suffering 
is  not  a  fixed  one  ;  it  fluctuates  with  the  perfectness  of  the 
life.  That  our  pains  are,  as  they  are,  unendurable,  awful, 
overwhelming,  crushing,  not  to  be  borne  save  in  misery 
and  dumb  impatience,  which  utter  exhaustion  alone  makes 
patient,  —  that  our  pains  are  thus  unendurable,  means  not 
that  they  are  too  great,  but  that  we  are  sick.  We  have  not 
got  our  proper  life.  So  you  perceive  pain  is  no  more 
necessarily  an  evil,  but  an  essential  element  of  the  highest 
good." 1 

But  the  highest  good  can  be  achieved  only  by  our 
getting  our  proper  life;  and  that  can  come  about 
only  by  help  of  a  moral  energy  born  of  the  faith 
that  in  some  way  or  other  we  shall  succeed  in  getting 
it  if  we  try  pertinaciously  enough.  This  world  is 
good,  we  must  say,  since  it  is  what  we  make  it,  —  and 
we  shall  make  it  good.  How  can  we  exclude  from 
the  cognition  of  a  truth  a  faith  which  is  involved  in 
the  creation  of  the  truth?  M  has  its  character  inde- 
terminate, susceptible  of  forming  part  of  a  thorough- 
going pessimism  on  the  one  hand,  or  of  a  meliorism, 
a  moral  (as  distinguished  from  a  sensual)  optimism 
on  the  other.  AH  depends  on  the  character  of  the 

1  Life  of  James  Hinton,  pp.  172,  173.  See  also  the  excellent  chap- 
ter on  Faith  and  Sight  in  the  Mystery  of  Matter,  by  J.  Allanson 
Picton.  Hinton's  Mystery  of  Pain  will  undoubtedly  always  remain 
the  classical  utterance  on  this  subject. 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  103 

personal  contribution  x.  Wherever  the  facts  to  be 
formulated  contain  such  a  contribution,  we  may  log- 
ically, legitimately,  and  inexpugnably  believe  what 
we  desire.  The  belief  creates  its  verification.  The 
thought  becomes  literally  father  to  the  fact,  as  the 
wish  was  father  to  the  thought.1 

Let  us  now  turn  to  the  radical  question  of  life,  — 
the  question  whether  this  be  at  bottom  a  moral  or 
an  unmoral  universe,  —  and  see  whether  the  method 
of  faith  may  legitimately  have  a  place  there.  It  is 
really  the  question  of  materialism.  Is  the  world  a 
simple  brute  actuality,  an  existence  de  facto  about 
which  the  deepest  thing  that  can  be  said  is  that  it 
happens  so  to  be;  or  is  the  judgment  of  better  or 
worse,  of  ought,  as  intimately  pertinent  to  phenom- 
ena as  the  simple  judgment  is  or  is  not  ?  The  mate- 
rialistic theorists  say  that  judgments  of  worth  are 
themselves  mere  matters  of  fact;  that  the  words 
'  good '  and  '  bad '  have  no  sense  apart  from  subjective 
passions  and  interests  which  we  may,  if  we  please,  play 
fast  and  loose  with  at  will,  so  far  as  any  duty  of  ours 
to  the  non-human  universe  is  concerned.  Thus,  when 
a  materialist  says  it  is  better  for  him  to  suffer  great 
inconvenience  than  to  break  a  promise,  he  only  means 
that  his  social  interests  have  become  so  knit  up  with 

1  Observe  that  in  all  this  not  a  word  has  been  said  of  free-will.  It 
all  applies  as  well  to  a  predetermined  as  to  an  indeterminate  universe. 
If  M  -+-  x  is  fixed  in  advance,  the  belief  which  leads  to  x  and  the  de- 
sire which  prompts  the  belief  are  also  fixed.  But  fixed  or  not,  these 
subjective  states  form  a  phenomenal  condition  necessarily  preceding 
the  facts ;  necessarily  constitutive,  therefore,  of  the  truth  M  -f-  x  which 
we  seek.  If,  however,  free  acts  be  possible,  a  faith  in  their  possibility, 
by  augmenting  the  moral  energy  which  gives  them  birth,  will  increase 
their  frequency  in  a  given  individual. 


104         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

keeping  faith  that,  those  interests  once  being  granted, 
it  is  better  for  him  to  keep  the  promise  in  spite  of 
everything.  But  the  interests  themselves  are  neither 
right  nor  wrong,  except  possibly  with  reference  to 
some  ulterior  order  of  interests  which  themselves 
again  are  mere  subjective  data  without  character, 
either  good  or  bad. 

For  the  absolute  moralists,  on  the  contrary,  the  in- 
terests are  not  there  merely  to  be  felt,  —  they  are  to 
be  believed  in  and  obeyed.  Not  only  is  it  best  for 
my  social  interests  to  keep  my  promise,  but  best  for 
me  to  have  those  interests,  and  best  for  the  cosmos  to 
have  this  me.  Like  the  old  woman  in  the  story  who 
described  the  world  as  resting  on  a  rock,  and  then 
explained  that  rock  to  be  supported  by  another  rock, 
and  finally  when  pushed  with  questions  said  it  was 
rocks  all  the  way  down,  —  he  who  believes  this  to  be 
a  radically  moral  universe  must  hold  the  moral  order 
to  rest  either  on  an  absolute  and  ultimate  should,  or 
on  a  series  of  shoulds  all  the  way  down.1 

The  practical  difference  between  this  objective  sort 
of  moralist  and  the  other  one  is  enormous.  The  sub- 
jectivist  in  morals,  when  his  moral  feelings  are  at  war 
with  the  facts  about  him,  is  always  free  to  seek  har- 
mony by  toning  down  the  sensitiveness  of  the  feelings. 
Being  mere  data,  neither  good  nor  evil  in  themselves, 
he  may  pervert  them  or  lull  them  to  sleep  by  any 
means  at  his  command.  Truckling,  compromise,  time- 
serving, capitulations  of  conscience,  are  conventionally 
opprobrious  names  for  what,  if  successfully  carried  out, 

1  In  either  case,  as  a  later  essay  explains  (see  p.  193),  the  should 
which  the  moralist  regards  as  binding  upon  him  must  be  rooted  in  the 
feeling  of  some  other  thinker,  or  collection  of  thinkers,  to  whose  de- 
mands he  individually  bows. 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  105 

would  be  on  his  principles  by  far  the  easiest  and  most 
praiseworthy  mode  of  bringing  about  that  harmony 
between  inner  and  outer  relations  which  is  all  that  he 
means  by  good.  The  absolute  moralist,  on  the  other 
hand,  when  his  interests  clash  with  the  world,  is  not 
free  to  gain  harmony  by  sacrificing  the  ideal  inter- 
ests. According  to  him,  these  latter  should  be  as 
they  are  and  not  otherwise.  Resistance  then,  pov- 
erty, martyrdom  if  need  be,  tragedy  in  a  word, — 
such  are  the  solemn  feasts  of  his  inward  faith.  Not 
that  the  contradiction  between  the  two  men  occurs 
every  day ;  in  commonplace  matters  all  moral  schools 
agree.  It  is  only  in  the  lonely  emergencies  of  life  that 
our  creed  is  tested :  then  routine  maxims  fail,  and  we 
fall  back  on  our  gods.  It  cannot  then  be  said  that 
the  question,  Is  this  a  moral  world?  is  a  meaning- 
less and  unverifiable  question  because  it  deals  with 
something  non-phenomenal.  Any  question  is  full  of 
meaning  to  which,  as  here,  contrary  answers  lead  to 
contrary  behavior.  And  it  seems  as  if  in  answering 
such  a  question  as  this  we  might  proceed  exactly  as 
does  the  physical  philosopher  in  testing  an  hypothe- 
sis. He  deduces  from  the  hypothesis  an  experimental 
action,  x ;  this  he  adds  to  the  facts  M  already  exist- 
ing. It  fits  them  if  the  hypothesis  be  true ;  if  not, 
there  is  discord.  The  results  of  the  action  corroborate 
or  refute  the  idea  from  which  it  flowed.  So  here :  the 
verification  of  the  theory  which  you  may  hold  as  to 
the  objectively  moral  character  of  the  world  can  con- 
sist only  in  this,  —  that  if  you  proceed  to  act  upon 
your  theory  it  will  be  reversed  by  nothing  that  later 
turns  up  as  your  action's  fruit;  it  will  harmonize  so 
well  with  the  entire  drift  of  experience  that  the  latter 
will,  as  it  were,  adopt  it,  or  at  most  give  it  an  ampler 


io6          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

interpretation,  without  obliging  you  in  any  way  to 
change  the  essence  of  its  formulation.  If  this  be  an 
objectively  moral  universe,  all  acts  that  I  make  on 
that  assumption,  all  expectations  that  I  ground  on  it, 
will  tend  more  and  more  completely  to  interdigitate 
with  the  phenomena  already  existing.  M  +  x  will 
be  in  accord ;  and  the  more  I  live,  and  the  more  the 
fruits  of  my  activity  come  to  light,  the  more  satisfac- 
tory the  consensus  will  grow.  While  if  it  be  not  such 
a  moral  universe,  and  I  mistakenly  assume  that  it  is, 
the  course  of  experience  will  throw  ever  new  impedi- 
ments in  the  way  of  my  belief,  and  become  more  and 
more  difficult  to  express  in  its  language.  Epicycle 
hpon  epicycle  of  subsidiary  hypothesis  will  have  to  be 
invoked  to  give  to  the  discrepant  terms  a  temporary 
appearance  of  squaring  with  each  other;  but  at  last 
even  this  resource  will  fail. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  I  rightly  assume  the  universe 
to  be  not  moral,  in  what  does  my  verification  con- 
sist? It  is  that  by  letting  moral  interests  sit  lightly, 
by  disbelieving  that  there  is  any  duty  about  them 
(since  duty  obtains  only  as  between  them  and  other 
phenomena),  and  so  throwing  them  over  if  I  find  it 
hard  to  get  them  satisfied,  —  it  is  that  by  refusing  to 
take  up  a  tragic  attitude,  I  deal  in  the  long-run  most 
satisfactorily  with  the  facts  of  life.  "  All  is  vanity  " 
is  here  the  last  word  of  wisdom.  Even  though  in 
certain  limited  series  there  may  be  a  great  appear- 
ance of  seriousness,  he  who  in  the  main  treats  things 
with  a  degree  of  good-natured  scepticism  and  radical 
levity  will  find  that  the  practical  fruits  of  his  epicu- 
rean hypothesis  verify  it  more  and  more,  and  not 
only  save  him  from  pain  but  do  honor  to  his  sa- 
gacity. While,  on  the  other  hand,  he  who  contrary 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality.  107 

to  reality  stiffens  himself  in  the  notion  that  certain 
things  absolutely  should  be,  and  rejects  the  truth  that 
at  bottom  it  makes  no  difference  what  is,  will  find 
himself  evermore  thwarted  and  perplexed  and  be- 
muddled  by  the  facts  of  the  world,  and  his  tragic  dis- 
appointment will,  as  experience  accumulates,  seem  to 
drift  farther  and  farther  away  from  that  final  atone- 
ment or  reconciliation  which  certain  partial  tragedies 
often  get 

Anaesthesia  is  the  watchword  of  the  moral  sceptic 
brought  to  bay  and  put  to  his  trumps.  Energy  is  that 
of  the  moralist.  Act  on  my  creed,  cries  the  latter, 
and  the  results  of  your  action  will  prove  the  creed 
true,  and  that  the  nature  of  things  is  earnest  infinitely. 
Act  on  mine,  says  the  epicurean,  and  the  results  will 
prove  that  seriousness  is  but  a  superficial  glaze  upon 
a  world  of  fundamentally  trivial  import.  You  and  your 
acts  and  the  nature  of  things  will  be  alike  enveloped 
in  a  single  formula,  a  universal  vanitas  vanitatum. 

For  the  sake  of  simplicity  I  have  written  as  if  the 
verification  might  occur  in  the  life  of  a  single  philoso- 
pher,—  which  is  manifestly  untrue,  since  the  theories 
still  face  each  other,  and  the  facts  of  the  world  give 
countenance  to  both.  Rather  should  we  expect,  that, 
in  a  question  of  this  scope,  the  experience  of  the  en- 
tire human  race  must  make  the  verification,  and  that 
all  the  evidence  will  not  be  'in'  till  the  final  integra- 
tion of  things,  when  the  last  man  has  had  his  say  and 
contributed  his  share  to  the  still  unfinished  x.  Then 
the  proof  will  be  complete ;  then  it  will  appear  with- 
out doubt  whether  the  moralistic  x  has  filled  up  the 
gap  which  alone  kept  the  M  of  the  world  from  form- 
ing an  even  and  harmonious  unity,  or  whether  the 


Io8         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

non-moralistic  x  has  given  the  finishing  touches  which 
were  alone  needed  to  make  the  M  appear  outwardly 
as  vain  as  it  inwardly  was. 

But  if  this  be  so,  is  it  not  clear  that  the  facts  M, 
taken  per  se,  are  inadequate  to  justify  a  conclusion 
either  way  in  advance  of  my  action?  My  action  is 
the  complement  which,  by  proving  congruous  or  not, 
reveals  the  latent  nature  of  the  mass  to  which  it  is 
applied.  The  world  may  in  fact  be  likened  unto  a 
lock,  whose  inward  nature,  moral  or  unmoral,  will 
never  reveal  itself  to  our  simply  expectant  gaze. 
The  positivists,  forbidding  us  to  make  any  assump- 
tions regarding  it,  condemn  us  to  eternal  ignorance, 
for  the  '  evidence '  which  they  wait  for  can  never 
come  so  long  as  we  are  passive.  But  nature  has  put 
into  our  hands  two  keys,  by  which  we  may  test  the 
lock.  If  we  try  the  moral  key  and  it  fits,  it  is  a  moral 
lock.  If  we  try  the  unmoral  key  and  it  fits,  it  is  an 
unmoral  lock.  I  cannot  possibly  conceive  of  any 
other  sort  of 'evidence'  or  'proof  than  this.  It  is 
quite  true  that  the  co-operation  of  generations  is 
needed  to  educe  it.  But  in  these  matters  the  solidar- 
ity (so  called)  of  the  human  race  is  a  patent  fact. 
The  essential  thing  to  notice  is  that  our  active  pref- 
erence is  a  legitimate  part  of  the  game,  —  that  it  is 
our  plain  business  as  men  to  try  one  of  the  keys,  and 
the  one  in  which  we  most  confide.  If  then  the  proof 
exist  not  till  I  have  acted,  and  I  must  needs  in  acting 
run  the  risk  of  being  vong,  how  can  the  popular 
science  professors  be  right  in  objurgating  in  me 
as  infamous  a  '  credulity '  which  the  strict  logic  of 
the  situation  requires  ?  If  this  really  be  a  moral 
universe ;  if  by  my  acts  I  be  a  factor  of  its  destinies ; 
if  to  believe  where  I  may  doubt  be  itself  a  moral  act 


The  Sentiment  of  Rationality .          109 

analogous  to  voting  for  a  side  not  yet  sure  to  win,  — 
by  what  right  shall  they  close  in  upon  me  and 
steadily  negate  the  deepest  conceivable  function  of 
my  being  by  their  preposterous  command  that  I 
shall  stir  neither  hand  nor  foot,  but  remain  balancing 
myself  in  eternal  and  insoluble  doubt?  Why,  doubt 
itself  is  a  decision  of  the  widest  practical  reach,  if 
only  because  we  may  miss  by  doubting  what  goods 
we  might  be  gaining  by  espousing  the  winning  side. 
But  more  than  that !  it  is  often  practically  impossible 
to  distinguish  doubt  from  dogmatic  negation.  If  I 
refuse  to  stop  a  murder  because  I  am  in  doubt 
whether  it  be  not  justifiable  homicide,  I  am  virtually 
abetting  the  crime.  If  I  refuse  to  bale  out  a  boat 
because  I  am  in  doubt  whether  my  efforts  will  keep 
her  afloat,  I  am  really  helping  to  sink  her.  If  in  the 
mountain  precipice  I  doubt  my  right  to  risk  a  leap,  I 
actively  connive  at  my  destruction.  He  who  com- 
mands himself  not  to  be  credulous  of  God,  of  duty,  of 
freedom,  of  immortality,  may  again  and  again  be 
indistinguishable  from  him  who  dogmatically  denies 
them.  Scepticism  in  moral  matters  is  an  active  ally 
of  immorality.  Who  is  not  for  is  against.  The 
universe  will  have  no  neutrals  in  these  questions. 
In  theory  as  in  practice,  dodge  or  hedge,  or  talk  as 
we  like  about  a  wise  scepticism,  we  are  really  doing 
volunteer  military  service  for  one  side  or  the  other. 

Yet  obvious  as  this  necessity  practically  is,  thou- 
sands of  innocent  magazine  readers  lie  paralyzed  and 
terrified  in  the  network  of  shallow  negations  which 
the  leaders  of  opinion  have  thrown  over  their  souls. 
All  they  need  to  be  free  and  hearty  again  in  the 
exercise  of  their  birthright  is  that  these  fastidious 
vetoes  should  be  swept  away.  All  that  the  human 


no          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

heart  wants  is  its  chance.  It  will  willingly  forego 
certainty  in  universal  matters  if  only  it  can  be  allowed 
to  feel  that  in  them  it  has  that  same  inalienable  right 
to  run  risks,  which  no  one  dreams  of  refusing  to  it  in 
the  pettiest  practical  affairs.  And  if  I,  in  these  last 
pages,  like  the  mouse  in  the  fable,  have  gnawed  a  few 
of  the  strings  of  the  sophistical  net  that  has  been 
binding  down  its  lion-strength,  I  shall  be  more  than 
rewarded  for  my  pains. 

To  sum  up :  No  philosophy  will  permanently  be 
deemed  rational  by  all  men  which  (in  addition  to 
meeting  logical  demands)  does  not  to  some  degree 
pretend  to  determine  expectancy,  and  in  a  still 
greater  degree  make  a  direct  appeal  to  all  those  pow- 
ers of  our  nature  which  we  hold  in  highest  esteem. 
Faith,  being  one  of  these  powers,  will  always  remain 
a  factor  not  to  be  banished  from  philosophic  con- 
structions, the  more  so  since  in  many  ways  it  brings 
forth  its  own  verification.  In  these  points,  then, 
it  is  hopeless  to  look  for  literal  agreement  among 
mankind. 

The  ultimate  philosophy,  we  may  therefore  con- 
clude, must  not  be  too  strait-laced  in  form,  must  not 
in  all  its  parts  divide  heresy  from  orthodoxy  by  too 
sharp  a  line.  There  must  be  left  over  and  above  the 
propositions  to  be  subscribed,  ubique,  semper,  et  ab 
omnibus,  another  realm  into  which  the  stifled  soul 
may  escape  from  pedantic  scruples  and  indulge  its 
own  faith  at  its  own  risks;  and  all  that  can  here  be 
done  will  be  to  mark  out  distinctly  the  questions 
which  fall  within  faith's  sphere. 


Reflex  Action  and  Theism.  in 


REFLEX  ACTION   AND  THEISM.1 

MEMBERS  OF  THE  MINISTERS'  INSTITUTE: 

LET  me  confess  to  the  diffidence  with  which  I 
find  myself  standing  here  to-day.  When  the 
invitation  of  your  committee  reached  me  last  fall,  the 
simple  truth  is  that  I  accepted  it  as  most  men  accept 
a  challenge, —  not  because  they  wish  to  fight,  but 
because  they  are  ashamed  to  say  no.  Pretending  in 
my  small  sphere  to  be  a  teacher,  I  felt  it  would  be 
cowardly  to  shrink  from  the  keenest  ordeal  to  which 
a  teacher  can  be  exposed,  —  the  ordeal  of  teaching 
other  teachers.  Fortunately,  the  trial  will  last  but 
one  short  hour ;  and  I  have  the  consolation  of  remem- 
bering Goethe's  verses,  — 

"  Vor  den  Wissenden  sich  stellen, 
Sicher  ist  's  in  alien  Fallen,"  — 

for  if  experts  are  the  hardest  people  to  satisfy,  they 
have  at  any  rate  the  liveliest  sense  of  the  difficulties 
of  one's  task,  and  they  know  quickest  when  one  hits 
the  mark. 

Since  it  was  as  a  teacher  of  physiology  that  I  was 
most  unworthily  officiating  when  your  committee's  invi- 

1  Address  delivered  to  the  Unitarian  Ministers'  Institute  at  Prince- 
ton, Mass.,  1881,  and  printed  in  the  Unitarian  Review  for  October  of 
that  year. 


lia  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

tation  reached  me,  I  must  suppose  it  to  be  for  the  sake 
of  bringing  a  puff  of  the  latest  winds  of  doctrine  which 
blow  over  that  somewhat  restless  sea  that  my  presence 
is  desired.  Among  all  the  healthy  symptoms  that 
characterize  this  age,  I  know  no  sounder  one  than 
the  eagerness  which  theologians  show  to  assimilate 
results  of  science,  and  to  hearken  to  the  conclusions 
of  men  of  science  about  universal  matters.  One  runs 
a  better  chance  of  being  listened  to  to-day  if  one  can 
quote  Darwin  and  Helmholtz  than  if  one  can  only 
quote  Schleiermacher  or  Coleridge.  I  almost  feel 
myself  this  moment  that  were  I  to  produce  a  frog 
and  put  him  through  his  physiological  performances 
in  a  masterly  manner  before  your  eyes,  I  should  gain 
more  reverential  ears  for  what  I  have  to  say  during 
the  remainder  of  the  hour.  I  will  not  ask  whether 
there  be  not  something  of  mere  fashion  in  this  prestige 
which  the  words  of  the  physiologists  enjoy  just  now. 
If  it  be  a  fashion,  it  is  certainly  a  beneficial  one  upon 
the  whole ;  and  to  challenge  it  would  come  with  a 
poor  grace  from  one  who  at  the  moment  he  speaks  is 
so  conspicuously  profiting  by  its  favors. 

I  will  therefore  only  say  this :  that  the  latest  breeze 
from  the  physiological  horizon  need  not  necessarily 
be  the  most  important  one.  Of  the  immense  amount 
of  work  which  the  laboratories  of  Europe  and  Amer- 
ica, and  one  may  add  of  Asia  and  Australia,  are 
producing  every  year,  much  is  destined  to  speedy 
refutation ;  and  of  more  it  may  be  said  that  its  interest 
is  purely  technical,  and  not  in  any  degree  philosophi- 
cal or  universal. 

This  being  the  case,  I  know  you  will  justify  me  if  I 
fall  back  on  a  doctrine  which  is  fundamental  and  well 
established  rather  than  novel,  and  ask  you  whether 


Reflex  Action  and  Theism.  113 

Dy  taking  counsel  together  we  may  not  trace  some 
new  consequences  from  it  which  shall  interest  us  all 
alike  as  men.  I  refer  to  the  doctrine  of  reflex  action, 
especially  as  extended  to  the  brain.  This  is,  of  course, 
so  familiar  to  you  that  I  hardly  need  define  it.  In  a 
general  way,  all  educated  people  know  what  reflex 
action  means. 

It  means  that  the  acts  we  perform  are  always  the 
result  of  outward  discharges  from  the  nervous  centres, 
and  that  these  outward  discharges  are  themselves 
the  result  of  impressions  from  the  external  world,  car- 
ried in  along  one  or  another  of  our  sensory  nerves. 
Applied  at  first  to  only  a  portion  of  our  acts,  this 
conception  has  ended  by  being  generalized  more 
and  more,  so  that  now  most  physiologists  tell  us 
that  every  action  whatever,  even  the  most  deliber- 
ately weighed  and  calculated,  does,  so  far  as  its  organic 
conditions  go,  follow  the  reflex  type.  There  is  not 
one  which  cannot  be  remotely,  if  not  immediately, 
traced  to  an  origin  in  some  incoming  impression  of 
sense.  There  is  no  impression  of  sense  which,  unless 
inhibited  by  some  other  stronger  one,  does  not  imme- 
diately or  remotely  express  itself  in  action  of  some 
kind.  There  is  no  one  of  those  complicated  perform- 
ances in  the  convolutions  of  the  brain  to  which  our 
trains  of  thought  correspond,  which  is  not  a  mere 
middle  term  interposed  between  an  incoming  sensa- 
tion that  arouses  it  and  an  outgoing  discharge  of  some 
sort,  inhibitory  if  not  exciting,  to  which  itself  gives 
rise.  The  structural  unit  of  the  nervous  system  is  in 
fact  a  triad,  neither  of  whose  elements  has  any  inde- 
pendent existence.  The  sensory  impression  exists 
only  for  the  sake  of  awaking  the  central  process  of 
reflection,  and  the  central  process  of  reflection  exists 

8 


H4          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

only  for  the  sake  of  calling  forth  the  final  act.  All 
action  is  thus  re-action  upon  the  outer  world ;  and 
the  middle  stage  of  consideration  or  contemplation 
or  thinking  is  only  a  place  of  transit,  the  bottom  of  a 
loop,  both  whose  ends  have  their  point  of  applica- 
tion in  the  outer  world.  If  it  should  ever  have  no 
roots  in  the  outer  world,  if  it  should  ever  happen  that 
it  led  to  no  active  measures,  it  would  fail  of  its  essen- 
tial function,  and  would  have  to  be  considered  either 
pathological  or  abortive.  The  current  of  life  which 
runs  in  at  our  eyes  or  ears  is  meant  to  run  out  at  our 
hands,  feet,  or  lips.  The  only  use  of  the  thoughts  it 
occasions  while  inside  is  to  determine  its  direction  to 
whichever  of  these  organs  shall,  on  the  whole,  under 
the  circumstances  actually  present,  act  in  the  way 
most  propitious  to  our  welfare. 

The  willing  department  of  our  nature,  in  short, 
dominates  both  the  conceiving  department  and  the 
feeling  department;  or,  in  plainer  English,  percep- 
tion and  thinking  are  only  there  for  behavior's 
sake. 

I  am  sure  I  am  not  wrong  in  stating  this  result  as 
one  of  the  fundamental  conclusions  to  which  the  entire 
drift  of  modern  physiological  investigation  sweeps  us. 
If  asked  what  great  contribution  physiology  has  made 
to  psychology  of  late  years,  I  am  sure  every  compe- 
tent authority  will  reply  that  her  influence  has  in  no 
way  been  so  weighty  as  in  the  copious  illustration, 
verification,  and  consolidation  of  this  broad,  general 
point  of  view. 

I  invite  you,  then,  to  consider  what  may  be  the  pos- 
sible speculative  consequences  involved  in  this  great 
achievement  of  our  generation.  Already,  it  dom- 
inates all  the  new  work  done  in  psychology;  but 


Reflex  Action  and  Theism.  115 

what  I  wish  to  ask  is  whether  its  influence  may  not 
extend  far  beyond  the  limits  of  psychology,  even  into 
those  of  theology  herself.  The  relations  of  the  doc- 
trine of  reflex  action  with  no  less  a  matter  than  the 
doctrine  of  theism  is,  in  fact,  the  topic  to  which  I 
now  invite  your  attention. 

We  are  not  the  first  in  the  field.  There  have  not 
been  wanting  writers  enough  to  say  that  reflex  action 
and  all  that  follows  from  it  give  the  coup  de  grdce  to 
the  superstition  of  a  God. 

If  you  open,  for  instance,  such  a  book  on  compar- 
ative psychology,  as  der  Thierische  Wille  of  G.  H. 
Schneider,  you  will  find,  sandwiched  in  among  the 
admirable  dealings  of  the  author  with  his  proper  sub- 
ject, and  popping  out  upon  us  in  unexpected  places, 
the  most  delightfully  na'if  German  onslaughts  on  the 
degradation  of  theologians,  and  the  utter  incompati- 
bility of  so  many  reflex  adaptations  to  the  environ- 
ment with  the  existence  of  a  creative  intelligence. 
There  was  a  time,  remembered  by  many  of  us  here, 
when  the  existence  of  reflex  action  and  all  the  other 
harmonies  between  the  organism  and  the  world  were 
held  to  prove  a  God.  Now,  they  are  held  to  disprove 
him.  The  next  turn  of  the  whirligig  may  bring  back 
proof  of  him  again. 

Into  this  debate  about  his  existence,  I  will  not  pre- 
tend to  enter.  I  must  take  up  humbler  ground,  and 
limit  my  ambition  to  showing  that  a  God,  whether 
existent  or  not,  is  at  all  events  the  kind  of  being 
which,  if  he  did  exist,  would  form  the  most  adequate 
possible  object  for  minds  framed  like  our  own  to  con- 
ceive as  lying  at  the  root  of  the  universe.  My  thesis, 
in  other  words,  is  this :  that  some  outward  reality  oi 


Ii6  Essays  in   Popular  Philosophy. 

a  nature  defined  as  God's  nature  must  be  defined,  is 
the  only  ultimate  object  that  is  at  the  same  time 
rational  and  possible  for  the  human  mind's  contem- 
plation. Anything  short  of  God  is  not  rational, 
anything  more  than  God  is  not  possible,  if  the  hu- 
man mind  be  in  truth  the  triadic  structure  of  impres- 
sion, reflection,  and  reaction  which  we  at  the  outset 
allowed. 

Theism,  whatever  its  objective  warrant,  would  thus 
be  seen  to  have  a  subjective  anchorage  in  its  con- 
gruity  with  our  nature  as  thinkers;  and,  however  it 
may  fare  with  its  truth,  to  derive  from  this  subjective 
adequacy  the  strongest  possible  guaranty  of  its  per- 
manence. It  is  and  will  be  the  classic  mean  of  rational 
opinion,  the  centre  of  gravity  of  all  attempts  to  solve 
the  riddle  of  life,  —  some  falling  below  it  by  defect, 
some  flying  above  it  by  excess,  itself  alone  satisfying 
every  mental  need  in  strictly  normal  measure.  Our 
gain  will  thus  in  the  first  instance  be  psychological. 
We  shall  merely  have  investigated  a  chapter  in  the 
natural  history  of  the  mind,  and  found  that,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  such  natural  history,  God  may  be  called  the 
normal  object  of  the  mind's  belief.  Whether  over 
and  above  this  he  be  really  the  living  truth  is  another 
question.  If  he  is,  it  will  show  the  structure  of  our 
mind  to  be  in  accordance  with  the  nature  of  reality. 
Whether  it  be  or  not  in  such  accordance  is,  it  seems 
to  me,  one  of  those  questions  that  belong  to  the 
province  of  personal  faith  to  decide.  I  will  not  touch 
upon  the  question  here,  for  I  prefer  to  keep  to  the 
strictly  natural-history  point  of  view.  I  will  only  re- 
mind you  that  each  one  of  us  is  entitled  either  to 
doubt  or  to  believe  in  the  harmony  between  his  facul- 
ties and  the  truth ;  and  that,  whether  he  doubt  or  be 


Reflex  Action  and  Theism.  117 

lieve,  he  does  it  alike  on  his  personal  responsibility 
and  risk. 

"  Du  musst  glauben,  du  musst  wagen, 
Denn  die  Cotter  leihn  kein  Pfand, 
Nur  ein  Wunder  kann  dich  tragen 
In  das  schone  Wunderland." 

I  will  presently  define  exactly  what  I  mean  by  God 
and  by  Theism,  and  explain  what  theories  I  referred 
to  when  I  spoke  just  now  of  attempts  to  fly  beyond 
the  one  and  to  outbid  the  other. 

But,  first  of  all,  let  me  ask  you  to  linger  a  moment 
longer  over  what  I  have  called  the  reflex  theory  of 
mind,  so  as  to  be  sure  that  we  understand  it  abso- 
lutely before  going  on  to  consider  those  of  its  con- 
sequences of  which  I  am  more  particularly  to  speak. 
I  am  not  quite  sure  that  its  full  scope  is  grasped  even 
by  those  who  have  most  zealously  promulgated  it.  I 
am  not  sure,  for  example,  that  all  physiologists  see  that 
it  commits  them  to  regarding  the  mind  as  an  essen- 
tially teleological  mechanism.  I  mean  by  this  that  the 
conceiving  or  theorizing  faculty  —  the  mind's  middle 
department  —  functions  exclusively  for  the  sake  of 
ends  that  do  not  exist  at  all  in  the  world  of  impres- 
sions we  receive  by  way  of  our  senses,  but  are  set  by 
our  emotional  and  practical  subjectivity  altogether.1 
It  is  a  transformer  of  the  world  of  our  impressions 
into  a  totally  different  world,  —  the  world  of  our  con- 
ception; and  the  transformation  is  effected  in  the 
interests  of  our  volitional  nature,  and  for  no  other 
purpose  whatsoever.  Destroy  the  volitional  nature, 
the  definite  subjective  purposes,  preferences,  fond- 

1  See  some  Remarks  on   Spencer's   Definition   of  Mind,  in  the 
Journal  of  Speculative  Philosophy  for  January,  1878. 


1 1 8  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

nesses  for  certain  effects,  forms,  orders,  and  not  the 
slightest  motive  would  remain  for  the  brute  order  of 
our  experience  to  be  remodelled  at  all.  But,  as  we 
have  the  elaborate  volitional  constitution  we  do  have, 
the  remodelling  must  be  effected ;  there  is  no  escape. 
The  world's  contents  are  given  to  each  of  us  in  an 
order  so  foreign  to  our  subjective  interests  that  we 
can  hardly  by  an  effort  of  the  imagination  picture  to 
ourselves  what  it  is  like.  We  have  to  break  that 
order  altogether,  —  and  by  picking  out  from  it  the 
items  which  concern  us,  and  connecting  them  with 
others  far  away,  which  we  say  '  belong '  with  them, 
we  are  able  to  make  out  definite  threads  of  sequence 
and  tendency;  to  foresee  particular  liabilities  and 
get  ready  for  them ;  and  to  enjoy  simplicity  and  har- 
mony in  place  of  what  was  chaos.  Is  not  the  sum  of 
your  actual  experience  taken  at  this  moment  and 
impartially  added  together  an  utter  chaos?  The 
strains  of  my  voice,  the  lights  and  shades  inside  the 
room  and  out,  the  murmur  of  the  wind,  the  ticking 
of  the  clock,  the  various  organic  feelings  you  may 
happen  individually  to  possess,  do  these  make  a 
whole  at  all?  Is  it  not  the  only  condition  of  your 
mental  sanity  in  the  midst  of  them  that  most  of  them 
should  become  non-existent  for  you,  and  that  a  few 
others  —  the  sounds,  I  hope,  which  I  am  uttering  — 
should  evoke  from  places  in  your  memory  that  have 
nothing  to  do  with  this  scene  associates  fitted  to  com- 
bine with  them  in  what  we  call  a  rational  train  of 
thought,  —  rational,  because  it  leads  to  a  conclusion 
which  we  have  some  organ  to  appreciate?  We  have 
no  organ  or  faculty  to  appreciate  the  simply  given 
order.  The  real  world  as  it  is  given  objectively  at 
this  moment  is  the  sum  total  of  all  its  beings  and 


Reflex  Action  and  Theism.  119 

events  now.  But  can  we  think  of  such  a  sum?  Can 
we  realize  for  an  instant  what  a  cross-section  of  all 
existence  at  a  definite  point  of  time  would  be?  While 
I  talk  and  the  flies  buzz,  a  sea-gull  catches  a  fish  at 
the  mouth  of  the  Amazon,  a  tree  falls  in  the  Adiron- 
dack wilderness,  a  man  sneezes  in  Germany,  a  horse 
dies  in  Tartary,  and  twins  are  born  in  France.  What 
does  that  mean?  Does  the  contemporaneity  of  these 
events  with  one  another  and  with  a  million  others  as 
disjointed,  form  a  rational  bond  between  them,  and 
unite  them  into  anything  that  means  for  us  a  world? 
Yet  just  such  a  collateral  contemporaneity,  and  noth- 
ing else,  is  the  real  order  of  the  world.  It  is  an  order 
with  which  we  have  nothing  to  do  but  to  get  away 
from  it  as  fast  as  possible.  As  I  said,  we  break  it: 
we  break  it  into  histories,  and  we  break  it  into  arts, 
and  we  break  it  into  sciences ;  and  then  we  begin  to 
feel  at  home.  We  make  ten  thousand  separate  serial 
orders  of  it,  and  on  any  one  of  these  we  react  as 
though  the  others  did  not  exist.  We  discover  among 
its  various  parts  relations  that  were  never  given  to 
sense  at  all  (mathematical  relations,  tangents,  squares, 
and  roots  and  logarithmic  functions),  and  out  of  an 
infinite  number  of  these  we  call  certain  ones  essential 
and  lawgiving,  and  ignore  the  rest.  Essential  these 
relations  are,  but  only  for  our  purpose,  the  other  rela- 
tions being  just  as  real  and  present  as  they ;  and  our 
purpose  is  to  conceive  simply  and  to  foresee.  Are  not 
simple 'conception  and  prevision  subjective  ends  pure 
and  simple?  They  are  the  ends  of  what  we  call 
science ;  and  the  miracle  of  miracles,  a  miracle  not 
yet  exhaustively  cleared  up  by  any  philosophy,  is 
that  the  given  order  lends  itself  to  the  remodelling. 
It  shows  itself  plastic  to  many  of  our  scientific,  to 


I2O         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

many  of  our  aesthetic,  to  many  of  our  practical  pur- 
poses and  ends. 

When  the  man  of  affairs,  the  artist,  or  the  man  of 
science  fails,  he  is  not  rebutted.  He  tries  again.  He 
says  the  impressions  of  sense  must  give  way,  must  be 
reduced  to  the  desiderated  form.1  They  all  postulate 
in  the  interests  of  their  volitional  nature  a  harmony 
between  the  latter  and  the  nature  of  things.  The 

o 

theologian  does  no  more.  And  the  reflex  doctrine 
of  the  mind's  structure,  though  all  theology  should 
as  yet  have  failed  of  its  endeavor,  could  but  confess 
that  the  endeavor  itself  at  least  obeyed  in  form  the 
mind's  most  necessary  law.2 

Now  for  the  question  I  asked  above :  What  kind 
of  a  being  would  God  be  if  he  did  exist  ?  The  word 
'  God  '  has  come  to  mean  many  things  in  the  history 

1  "No  amount  of  failure  in  the  attempt  to  subject  the  world  of 
sensible  experience  to  a  thorough-going  system  of  conceptions,  and 
to  bring  all  happenings   back  to  cases  of  immutably  valid  law,  is 
able  to  shake  our  faith  in  the  Tightness  of  our  principles.     We  hold 
fast  to  our  demand  that  even  the  greatest  apparent  confusion  must 
sooner  or  later  solve  itself  in  transparent  formulas.     We  begin  the 
work  ever  afresh  ;  and,  refusing  to  believe  that  nature  will  perma- 
nently withhold  the  reward  of  our  exertions,  think  rather  that  we 
have  hitherto  only  failed  to  push  them  in  the  right  direction.     And 
all  this  pertinacity  flows  from  a  conviction  that   we  have  no  right 
to  renounce  the  fulfilment  of  our   task.     What,  in  short    sustains 
the  courage  of  investigators  is  the  force  of  obligation  of  an  ethical 
idea."     (Sigwart :  Logik,  bd.  ii.,  p.  23.) 

This  is  a  true  account  of  the  spirit  of  science.  Does  it  essentially 
differ  from  the  spirit  of  religion  ?  And  is  any  one  entitled  to  say  in 
advance,  that,  while  the  one  form  of  faith  shall  be  crowned  with 
success,  the  other  is  certainly  doomed  to  fail  ? 

2  Concerning  the  transformation  of  the  given  order  into  the  order 
of  conception,  see  S.  H.  Hodgson,  The  Philosophy  of  Reflection, 
chap.  v. ;   H.  Lotze,  Logik,  sects.  342-351 ;  C.  Sigwart,  Logik,  sects, 
60-63,  I05- 


Reflex  Action  and  Theism.  121 

of  human  thought,  from  Venus  and  Jupiter  to  the 
'  Idee  '  which  figures  in  the  pages  of  Hegel.  Even 
the  laws  of  physical  nature  have,  in  these  positivis- 
tic  times,  been  held  worthy  of  divine  honor  and  pre- 
sented as  the  only  fitting  object  of  our  reverence.1 
Of  course,  if  our  discussion  is  to  bear  any  fruit,  we 
must  mean  something  more  definite  than  this.  We 
must  not  call  any  object  of  our  loyalty  a  '  God  '  with- 
out more  ado,  simply  because  to  awaken  our  loyalty 
happens  to  be  one  of  God's  functions.  He  must  have 
some  intrinsic  characteristics  of  his  own  besides; 
and  theism  must  mean  the  faith  of  that  man  who 
believes  that  the  object  of  his  loyalty  has  those  other 
attributes,  negative  or  positive,  as  the  case  may  be. 

Now,  as  regards  a  great  many  of  the  attributes 
of  God,  and  their  amounts  and  mutual  relations,  the 
world  has  been  delivered  over  to  disputes.  All 
such  may  for  our  present  purpose  be  considered 
as  quite  inessential.  Not  only  such  matters  as  his 
mode  of  revealing  himself,  the  precise  extent  of  his 
providence  and  power  and  their  connection  with  our 
free-will,  the  proportion  of  his  mercy  to  his  justice, 
and  the  amount  of  his  responsibility  for  evil ;  but 
also  his  metaphysical  relation  to  the  phenomenal 
world,  whether  causal,  substantial,  ideal,  or  what  not,  — 
are  affairs  of  purely  sectarian  opinion  that  need  not 
concern  us  at  all.  Whoso  debates  them  presup- 
poses the  essential  features  of  theism  to  be  granted 
already;  and  it  is  with  these  essential  features,  the 
bare  poles  of  the  subject,  that  our  business  exclu- 
sively lies. 

1  Haeckel  has  recently  (Der  Monismus,  1893,  P-  37)  proposed  the 
Cosmic  Ether  as  a  divinity  fitted  to  reconcile  science  with  theistic 
faith. 


122          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

Now,  what  are  these  essential  features  ?  First,  it 
is  essential  that  God  be  conceived  as  the  deepest 
power  in  the  universe ;  and,  second,  he  must  be  con- 
ceived under  the  form  of  a  mental  personality.  The 
personality  need  not  be  determined  intrinsically  any 
further  than  is  involved  in  the  holding  of  certain 
things  dear,  and  in  the  recognition  of  our  dispositions 
toward  those  things,  the  things  themselves  being  all 
good  and  righteous  things.  But,  extrinsically  con- 
sidered, so  to  speak,  God's  personality  is  to  be  re- 
garded, like  any  other  personality,  as  something  lying 
outside  of  my  own  and  other  than  me,  and  whose 
existence  I  simply  come  upon  and  find.  A  power 
not  ourselves,  then,  which  not  only  makes  for  right- 
eousness, but  means  it,  and  which  recognizes  us,  — 
such  is  the  definition  which  I  think  nobody  will  be 
inclined  to  dispute.  Various  are  the  attempts  to 
shadow  forth  the  other  lineaments  of  so  supreme  a 
personality  to  our  human  imagination;  various  the 
ways  of  conceiving  in  what  mode  the  recognition, 
the  hearkening  to  our  cry,  can  come.  Some  are  gross 
and  idolatrous ;  some  are  the  most  sustained  efforts 
man's  intellect  has  ever  made  to  keep  still  living  on 
that  subtile  edge  of  things  where  speech  and  thought 
expire.  But,  with  all  these  differences,  the  essence 
remains  unchanged.  In  whatever  other  respects  the 
divine  personality  may  differ  from  ours  or  may  re- 
semble it,  the  two  are  consanguineous  at  least  in 
this,  —  that  both  have  purposes  for  which  they  care, 
and  each  can  hear  the  other's  call. 

Meanwhile,  we  can  already  see  one  consequence 
and  one  point  of  connection  with  the  reflex-action 
theory  of  mind.  Any  mind,  constructed  on  the 


Reflex  Action  and  Theism.  123 

triadic-reflex  pattern,  must  first  get  its  impression 
from  the  object  which  it  confronts ;  then  define  what 
that  object  is,  and  decide  what  active  measures  its 
presence  demands;  and  finally  react.  The  stage  of 
reaction  depends  on  the  stage  of  definition,  and  these, 
of  course,  on  the  nature  of  the  impressing  object. 
When  the  objects  are  concrete,  particular,  and  fa- 
miliar, our  reactions  are  firm  and  certain  enough, 
—  often  instinctive.  I  see  the  desk,  and  lean  on  it ; 
I  see  your  quiet  faces,  and  I  continue  to  talk.  But 
the  objects  will  not  stay  concrete  and  particular: 
they  fuse  themselves  into  general  essences,  and  they 
sum  themselves  into  a  whole,  —  the  universe.  And 
then  the  object  that  confronts  us,  that  knocks  on 
our  mental  door  and  asks  to  be  let  in,  and  fixed  and 
decided  upon  and  actively  met,  is  just  this  whole 
universe  itself  and  its  essence. 

What  are  they,  and  how  shall  I  meet  them  ? 

The  whole  flood  of  faiths  and  systems  here  rush  in. 
Philosophies  and  denials  of  philosophy,  religions  and 
atheisms,  scepticisms  and  mysticisms,  confirmed 
emotional  moods  and  habitual  practical  biases,  jos- 
tle one  another ;  for  all  are  alike  trials,  hasty,  prolix, 
or  of  seemly  length,  to  answer  this  momentous  ques- 
tion. And  the  function  of  them  all,  long  or  short, 
that  which  the  moods  and  the  systems  alike  sub- 
serve and  pass  into,  is  the  third  stage,  —  the  stage 
of  action.  For  no  one  of  them  itself  is  final.  They 
form  but  the  middle  segment  of  the  mental  curve, 
and  not  its  termination.  As  the  last  theoretic  pulse 
dies  away,  it  does  not  leave  the  mental  process  com- 
plete :  it  is  but  the  forerunner  of  the  practical  mo- 
ment, in  which  alone  the  cycle  of  mentality  finds  its 
rhythmic  pause. 


124          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

We  easily  delude  ourselves  about  this  middle  stage. 
Sometimes  we  think  it  final,  and  sometimes  we  fail  to 
see,  amid  the  monstrous  diversity  in  the  length  and 
complication  of  the  cogitations  which  may  fill  it,  that 
it  can  have  but  one  essential  function,  and  that  the 
one  we  have  pointed  out, —  the  function  of  defining 
the  direction  which  our  activity,  immediate  or  remote, 
shall  take. 

If  I  simply  say,  "Vanitas  vanitatum,  omnia  van- 
itas !  "  I  am  defining  the  total  nature  of  things  in  a 
way  that  carries  practical  consequences  with  it  as 
decidedly  as  if  I  write  a  treatise  De  Natura  Rerum  in 
twenty  volumes.  The  treatise  may  trace  its  conse- 
quences more  minutely  than  the  saying;  but  the  only 
worth  of  either  treatise  or  saying  is  that  the  conse- 
quences are  there.  The  long  definition  can  do  no 
more  than  draw  them ;  the  short  definition  does  no 
less.  Indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  if  two  apparently 
different  definitions  of  the  reality  before  us  should 
have  identical  consequences,  those  two  definitions 
would  really  be  identical  definitions,  made  delusively 
to  appear  different  merely  by  the  different  verbiage 
in  which  they  are  expressed.1 

My  time  is  unfortunately  too  short  to  stay  and  give 
to  this  truth  the  development  it  deserves ;  but  I  will 
assume  that  you  grant  it  without  further  parley,  and 
pass  to  the  next  step  in  my  argument.  And  here, 
too,  I  shall  have  to  bespeak  your  close  attention  for  a 
moment,  while  I  pass  over  the  subject  far  more  rap- 

1  See  the  admirably  original  "  Illustrations  of  the  Logic  of  Sci- 
ence," by  C.  S.  Peirce,  especially  the  second  paper,  "  How  to  make 
our  Thoughts  clear,"  in  the  Popular  Science  Monthly  for  January, 
1878. 


Reflex  Action  and  Theism.  125 

idly  than  it  deserves.  Whether  true  or  false,  any 
view  of  the  universe  which  shall  completely  satisfy 
the  mind  must  obey  conditions  of  the  mind's  own 
imposing,  must  at  least  let  the  mind  be  the  umpire  to 
decide  whether  it  be  fit  to  be  called  a  rational  universe 
or  not.  Not  any  nature  of  things  which  may  seem  to 
be  will  also  seem  to  be  ip  so  facto  rational;  and  if  it 
do  not  seem  rational,  it  will  afflict  the  mind  with  a 
ceaseless  uneasiness,  till  it  be  formulated  or  interpreted 
in  some  other  and  more  congenial  way.  The  study 
of  what  the  mind's  criteria  of  rationality  are,  the  defi- 
nition of  its  exactions  in  this  respect,  form  an  intensely 
interesting  subject  into  which  I  cannot  enter  now 
with  any  detail.1  But  so  much  I  think  you  will  grant 
me  without  argument,  —  that  all  three  departments 
of  the  mind  alike  have  a  vote  in  the  matter,  and  that 
no  conception  will  pass  muster  which  violates  any  of 
their  essential  modes  of  activity,  or  which  leaves  them 
without  a  chance  to  work.  By  what  title  is  it  that 
every  would-be  universal  formula,  every  system  of 
philosophy  which  rears  its  head,  receives  the  inevit- 
able critical  volley  from  one  half  of  mankind,  and  falls 
to  the  rear,  to  become  at  the  very  best  the  creed  of 
some  partial  sect?  Either  it  has  dropped  out  of  its 
net  some  of  our  impressions  of  sense,  —  what  we  call 
the  facts  of  nature,  —  or  it  has  left  the  theoretic  and 
defining  department  with  a  lot  of  inconsistencies  and 
unmediated  transitions  on  its  hands ;  or  else,  finally, 
it  has  left  some  one  or  more  of  our  fundamental  active 
and  emotional  powers  with  no  object  outside  of  them- 
selves to  react-on  or  to  live  for.  Any  one  of  these 
defects  is  fatal  to  its  complete  success.  Some  one 

1  On  this  subject,  see  the  preceding  Essay. 


126          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

will  be  sure  to  discover  the  flaw,  to  scout  the  system, 
and  to  seek  another  in. its  stead. 

I  need  not  go  far  to  collect  examples  to  illustrate 
to  an  audience  of  theologians  what  I  mean.  Nor  will 
you  in  particular,  as  champions  of  the  Unitarianism 
of  New  England,  be  slow  to  furnish,  from  the  motives 
which  led  to  your  departure  from  our  orthodox  ances« 
tral  Calvinism,  instances  enough  under  the  third  or 
practical  head.  A  God  who  gives  so  little  scope  to 
love,  a  predestination  which  takes  from  endeavor  all 
its  zest  with  all  its  fruit,  are  irrational  conceptions, 
because  they  say  to  our  most  cherished  powers,  There 
is  no  object  for  you. 

Well,  just  as  within  the  limits  of  theism  some  kinds 
are  surviving  others  by  reason  of  their  greater  practi- 
cal rationality,  so  theism  itself,  by  reason  of  its  prac- 
tical rationality,  is  certain  to  survive  all  lower  creeds. 
Materialism  and  agnosticism,  even  were  they  true, 
could  never  gain  universal  and  popular  acceptance ; 
for  they  both,  alike,  give  a  solution  of  things  which  is 
irrational  to  the  practical  third  of  our  nature,  and  in 
which  we  can  never  volitionally  feel  at  home.  Each 
comes  out  of  the  second  or  theoretic  stage  of  mental 
functioning,  with  its  definition  of  the  essential  nature 
of  things,  its  formula  of  formulas  prepared.  The 
whole  array  of  active  forces  of  our  nature  stands  wait- 
ing, impatient  for  the  word  which  shall  tell  them  how 
to  discharge  themselves  most  deeply  and  worthily 
upon  life.  "Well!  "  cry  they,  "what  shall  we  do?" 
"  Ignoramus,  ignorabimus  !  "  says  agnosticism.  "  Re- 
act upon  atoms  and  their  concussions !  "  says  mate- 
rialism. What  a  collapse  !  The  mental  train  misses 
fire,  the  middle  fails  to  ignite  the  end,  the  cycle  breaks 
down  half-way  to  its  conclusion;  and  the  active 


Reflex  Action  and  Theism.  127 

powers  left  alone,  with  no  proper  object  on  which  to 
vent  their  energy,  must  either  atrophy,  sicken,  and 
die,  or  else  by  their  pent-up  convulsions  and  excite- 
ment keep  the  whole  machinery  in  a  fe  ver  until  some 
less  incommensurable  solution,  some  more  practically 
rational  formula,  shall  provide  a  normal  issue  for  the 
currents  of  the  soul. 

Now,  theism  always  stands  ready  with  the  most 
practically  rational  solution  it  is  possible  to  conceive. 
Not  an  energy  of  our  active  nature  to  which  it  does 
not  authoritatively  appeal,  not  an  emotion  of  which 
it  does  not  normally  and  naturally  release  the  springs. 
At  a  single  stroke,  it  changes  the  dead  blank  it  of  the 
world  into  a  living  thou,  with  whom  the  whole  man  may 
have  dealings.  To  you,  at  any  rate,  I  need  waste  no 
words  in  trying  to  prove  its  supreme  commensurate- 
ness  with  all  the  demands  that  department  Number 
Three  of  the  mind  has  the  power  to  impose  on  depart- 
ment Number  Two. 

Our  volitional  nature  must  then,  until  the  end  of 
time,  exert  a  constant  pressure  upon  the  other  depart- 
ments of  the  mind  to  induce  them  to  function  to 
theistic  conclusions.  No  contrary  formulas  can  be 
more  than  provisionally  held.  Infra-theistic  theories 
must  be  always  in  unstable  equilibrium ;  for  depart- 
ment  Number  Three  ever  lurks  in  ambush,  ready  to 
assert  its  rights ;  and  on  the  slightest  show  of  justifi- 
cation it  makes  its  fatal  spring,  and  converts  them 
into  the  other  form  in  which  alone  mental  peace  and 
order  can  permanently  reign. 

The  question  is,  then,  Can  departments  One  and 
Two,  can  the  facts  of  nature  and  the  theoretic  elabo- 
ration of  them,  always  lead  to  theistic  conclusions  ? 

The  future  history  of  philosophy  is  the  only  author* 


128          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

ity  capable  of  answering  that  question.  I,  at  all 
events,  must  not  enter  into  it  to-day,  as  that  would 
be  to  abandon  the  purely  natural- hi  story  point  of 
view  I  mean  to  keep. 

This  only  is  certain,  that  the  theoretic  faculty  lives 
between  two  fires  which  never  give  her  rest,  and 
make  her  incessantly  revise  her  formulations.  If  she 
sink  into  a  premature,  short-sighted,  and  idolatrous 
theism,  in  comes  department  Number  One  with  its 
battery  of  facts  of  sense,  and  dislodges  her  from  her 
dogmatic  repose.  If  she  lazily  subside  into  equilib- 
rium with  the  same  facts  of  sense  viewed  in  their  sim- 
ple mechanical  outwardness,  up  starts  the  practical 
reason  with  its  demands,  and  makes  that  couch  a 
bed  of  thorns.  From  generation  to  generation  thus  it 
goes,  —  now  a  movement  of  reception  from  without, 
now  one  of  expansion  from  within ;  department  Num- 
ber Two  always  worked  to  death,  yet  never  excused 
from  taking  the  most  responsible  part  in  the  arrange- 
ments. To-day,  a  crop  of  new  facts;  to-morrow,  a 
flowering  of  new  motives,  —  the  theoretic  faculty  al- 
ways having  to  effect  the  transition,  and  life  growing 
withal  so  complex  and  subtle  and  immense  that  her 
powers  of  conceiving  are  almost  ruptured  with  the 
strain.  See  how,  in  France,  the  mummy-cloths  of 
the  academic  and  official  theistic  philosophy  are  rent 
by  the  facts  of  evolution,  and  how  the  young  thinkers 
are  at  work !  See,  in  Great  Britain,  how  the  dryness 
of  the  strict  associationist  school,  which  under  the 
ministration  of  Mill,  Bain,  and  Spencer  dominated  us 
but  yesterday,  gives  way  to  more  generous  idealisms, 
born  of  more  urgent  emotional  needs  and  wrapping 
the  same  facts  in  far  more  massive  intellectual  har- 
monies! These  are  but  tackings  to  the  common 


Reflex  Action  and  Theism.  129 

port,  to  that  ultimate  Weltanschauung  of  maximum 
subjective  as  well  as  objective  richness,  which,  what- 
ever its  other  properties  may  be,  will  at  any  rate  wear 
the  theistic  form. 

Here  let  me  say  one  word  about  a  remark  we  often 
hear  coming  from  the  anti-theistic  wing:  It  is  base, 
it  is  vile,  it  is  the  lowest  depth  of  immorality,  to  allow 
department  Number  Three  to  interpose  its  demands, 
and  have  any  vote  in  the  question  of  what  is  true  and 
what  is  false ;  the  mind  must  be  a  passive,  reaction- 
less  sheet  of  white  paper,  on  which  reality  will  simply 
come  and  register  its  own  philosophic  definition,  as 
the  pen  registers  the  curve  on  the  sheet  of  a  chrono- 
graph. "  Of  all  the  cants  that  are  canted  in  this  cant- 
ing age"  this  has  always  seemed  to  me  the  most 
wretched,  especially  when  it  comes  from  professed 
psychologists.  As  if  the  mind  could,  consistently 
with  its  definition,  be  a  reactionless  sheet  at  all !  As 
if  conception  could  possibly  occur  except  for  a  teleo- 
logical  purpose,  except  to  show  us  the  way  from  a 
state  of  things  our  senses  cognize  to  another  state 
of  things  our  will  desires !  As  if  '  science '  itself 
were  anything  else  than  such  an  end  of  desire, 
and  a  most  peculiar  one  at  that!  And  as  if  the 
'  truths '  of  bare  physics  in  particular,  which  these 
sticklers  for  intellectual  purity  contend  to  be  the  only 
uncontaminated  form,  were  not  as  great  an  alteration 
and  falsification  of  the  simply  '  given '  order  of  the 
world,  into  an  order  conceived  solely  for  the  mind's 
convenience  and  delight,  as  any  theistic  doctrine  pos- 
sibly can  be ! 

Physics  is  but  one  chapter  in  the  great  jugglery 
which  our  conceiving  faculty  is  forever  playing  with 

9 


130          Essays  in   Popular  Philosophy. 

the  order  of  being  as  it  presents  itself  to  our  recep- 
tion. It  transforms  the  unutterable  dead  level  and 
continuum  of  the  '  given '  world  into  an  utterly  unlike 
world  of  sharp  differences  and  hierarchic  subordina- 
tions for  no  other  reason  than  to  satisfy  certain  sub- 
jective passions  we  possess.1 

And,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  the  given  world  is  there 
only  for  the  sake  of  the  operation.  At  any  rate,  to 
operate  upon  it  is  our  only  chance  of  approaching  it; 
for  never  can  we  get  a  glimpse  of  it  in  the  unimagin- 
able insipidity  of  its  virgin  estate.  To  bid  the  man's 
subjective  interests  be  passive  till  truth  express  itself 
from  out  the  environment,  is  to  bid  the  sculptor's 
chisel  be  passive  till  the  statue  express  itself  from  out 
the  stone.  Operate  we  must !  and  the  only  choice 
left  us  is  that  between  operating  to  poor  or  to  rich 
results.  The  only  possible  duty  there  can  be  in  the 
matter  is  the  duty  of  getting  the  richest  results  that 
the  material  given  will  allow.  The  richness  lies,  of 
course,  in  the  energy  of  all  three  departments  of  the 
mental  cycle.  Not  a  sensible  '  fact '  of  department 
One  must  be  left  in  the  cold,  not  a  faculty  of  depart- 
ment Three  be  paralyzed  ;  and  department  Two  must 
form  an  indestructible  bridge.  It  is  natural  that  the 
habitual  neglect  of  department  One  by  theologians 
should  arouse  indignation;  but  it  is  most  unnaiural 
that  the  indignation  should  take  the  form  of  a  whole- 
sale denunciation  of  department  Three.  It  is  the 
story  of  Kant's  dove  over  again,  denouncing  the  pres- 

1  "  As  soon  as  it  is  recognized  that  our  thought,  as  logic  deals  with 
it,  reposes  on  our  will  to  think,  the  primacy  of  the  will,  even  in 
the  theoretical  sphere,  must  be  conceded ;  and  the  last  of  presup- 
positions is  not  merely  [Kant's]  that  '  I  think '  must  accompany  all 
my  representations,  but  also  that  '  I  will '  must  dominate  all  my 
thinking."  (Sigwart:  Logik,  ii.  25.) 


Reflex  Action  and  Theism.  131 

sure  of  the  air.  Certain  of  our  positivists  keep  chim- 
ing to  us,  that,  amid  the  wreck  of  every  other  god 
and  idol,  one  divinity  still  stands  upright,  —  that  his 
name  is  Scientific  Truth,  and  that  he  has  but  one 
commandment,  but  that  one  supreme,  saying,  Thou 
shalt  not  be  a  theist,  for  that  would  be  to  satisfy  thy 
subjective  propensities,  and  the  satisfaction  of  those 
is  intellectual  damnation.  These  most  conscientious 
gentlemen  think  they  have  jumped  off  their  own  feet, 
—  emancipated  their  mental  operations  from  the  con- 
trol of  their  subjective  propensities  at  large  and  in 
toto.  But  they  are  deluded.  They  have  simply 
chosen  from  among  the  entire  set  of  propensities  at 
their  command  those  that  were  certain  to  construct, 
out  of  the  materials  given,  the  leanest,  lowest,  arid- 
est  result,  —  namely,  the  bare  molecular  world,  —  and 
they  have  sacrificed  all  the  rest.1 

Man's  chief  difference  from  the  brutes  lies  in  the 
exuberant  excess  of  his  subjective  propensities,  — 
his  pre-eminence  over  them  simply  and  solely  in  the 
number  and  in  the  fantastic  and  unnecessary  charac- 
ter of  his  wants,  physical,  moral,  aesthetic,  and  intel- 
lectual. Had  his  whole  life  not  been  a  quest  for  the 
superfluous,  he  would  never  have  established  himself 
as  inexpugnably  as  he  has  done  in  the  necessary. 
And  from  the  consciousness  of  this  he  should  draw 
the  lesson  that  his  wants  are  to  be  trusted ;  that  even 

1  As  our  ancestors  said,  Fiat  justitia,  pereat  mundus,  so  we,  who  do 
not  believe  in  justice  or  any  absolute  good,  must,  according  to  these 
prophets,  be  willing  to  see  the  world  perish,  in  order  that  scientia  fiat. 
Was  there  ever  a  more  exquisite  idol  of  the  den,  or  rather  of  the  shop  f 
In  the  clean  sweep  to  be  made  of  superstitions,  let  the  idol  of  stern 
obligation  to  be  scientific  go  with  the  rest,  and  people  will  have  a 
fair  chance  to  understand  one  another.  But  this  blowing  of  hot  and 
of  cold  makes  nothing  but  confusion. 


132          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

when  their  gratification  seems  farthest  off,  the  uneasi- 
ness they  occasion  is  still  the  best  guide  of  his  life, 
and  will  lead  him  to  issues  entirely  beyond  his  pres- 
ent powers  of  reckoning.  Prune  down  his  extrava- 
gance, sober  him,  and  you  undo  him.  The  appetite 
for  immediate  consistency  at  any  cost,  or  what  the 
logicians  call  the  '  law  of  parsimony/  —  which  is  no- 
thing but  the  passion  for  conceiving  the  universe 
in  the  most  labor-saving  way,  —  will,  if  made  the  ex- 
clusive law  of  the  mind,  end  by  blighting  the  devel- 
opment of  the  intellect  itself  quite  as  much  as  that 
of  the  feelings  or  the  will.  The  scientific  conception 
of  the  world  as  an  army  of  molecules  gratifies  this 
appetite  after  its  fashion  most  exquisitely.  But  if  the 
religion  of  exclusive  scientificism  should  ever  succeed 
in  suffocating  all  other  appetites  out  of  a  nation's 
mind,  and  imbuing  a  whole  race  with  the  persuasion 
that  simplicity  and  consistency  demand  a  tabula  rasa 
to  be  made  of  every  notion  that  does  not  form  part 
of  the  soi-disant  scientific  synthesis,  that  nation,  that 
race,  will  just  as  surely  go  to  ruin,  and  fall  a  prey  to 
their  more  richly  constituted  neighbors,  as  the  beasts 
of  the  field,  as  a  whole,  have  fallen  a  prey  to  man. 

I  have  myself  little  fear  for  our  Anglo-Saxon  race. 
Its  moral,  aesthetic,  and  practical  wants  form  too 
dense  a  stubble  to  be  mown  by  any  scientific  Occam's 
razor  that  has  yet  been  forged.  The  knights  of  the 
razor  will  never  form  among  us  more  than  a  sect; 
but  when  I  see  their  fraternity  increasing  in  numbers, 
and,  what  is  worse,  when  I  see  their  negations  acquir- 
ing almost  as  much  prestige  and  authority  as  their 
affirmations  legitimately  claim  over  the  minds  of  the 
docile  public,  I  feel  as  if  the  influences  working  in 
the  direction  of  our  mental  barbarization  were  be- 


Reflex  Action  and  Theism.  133 

ginning  to  be  rather  strong,  and  needed  some  posi- 
tive counteraction.  And  when  I  ask  myself  from 
what  quarter  the  invasion  may  best  be  checked,  I 
can  find  no  answer  as  good  as  the  one  suggested  by 
casting  my  eyes  around  this  room.  For  this  needful 
task,  no  fitter  body  of  men  than  the  Unitarian  clergy 
exists.  Who  can  uphold  the  rights  of  department 
Three  of  the  mind  with  better  grace  than  those  who 
long  since  showed  how  they  could  fight  and  suffer  for 
department  One  ?  As,  then,  you  burst  the  bonds  of 
a  narrow  ecclesiastical  tradition,  by  insisting  that  no 
fact  of  sense  or  result  of  science  must  be  left  out  of 
account  in  the  religious  synthesis,  so  may  you  still  be 
the  champions  of  mental  completeness  and  all-sided- 
ness.  May  you,  with  equal  success,  avert  the  forma- 
tion of  a  narrow  scientific  tradition,  and  burst  the 
bonds  of  any  synthesis  which  would  pretend  to  leave 
out  of  account  those  forms  of  being,  those  relations 
of  reality,  to  which  at  present  our  active  and  emo- 
tional tendencies  are  our  only  avenues  of  approach. 
I  hear  it  said  that  Unitarianism  is  not  growing  in 
these  days.  I  know  nothing  of  the  truth  of  the  state- 
ment; but  if  it  be  true,  it  is  surely  because  the  great 
ship  of  Orthodoxy  is  nearing  the  port  and  the  pilot 
is  being  taken  on  board.  If  you  will  only  lead 
in  a  theistic  science,  as  successfully  as  you  have  led 
in  a  scientific  theology,  your  separate  name  as  Uni- 
tarians may  perish  from  the  mouths  of  men ;  for  your 
task  will  have  been  done,  and  your  function  at  an  end. 
Until  that  distant  day,  you  have  work  enough  in  both 
directions  awaiting  you. 

Meanwhile,  let  me  pass  to  the  next  division  of  our 
subject.     I  said  that  we  are  forced  to  regard  God  as 


134          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

the  normal  object  of  the  mind's  belief,  inasmuch  as 
any  conception  that  falls  short  of  God  is  irrational, 
if  the  word  '  rational '  be  taken  in  its  fullest  sense ; 
while  any  conception  that  goes  beyond  God  is  im- 
possible, if  the  human  mind  be  constructed  after  the 
triadic-reflex  pattern  we  have  discussed  at  such 
length.  The  first  half  of  the  thesis  has  been  disposed 
of.  Infra-theistic  conceptions,  materialisms  and  ag- 
nosticisms, are  irrational  because  they  are  inade- 
quate stimuli  to  man's  practical  nature.  I  have  now 
to  justify  the  latter  half  of  the  thesis. 

I  dare  say  it  may  for  an  instant  have  perplexed 
some  of  you  that  I  should  speak  of  conceptions  that 
aimed  at  going  beyond  God,  and  of  attempts  to  fly 
above  him  or  outbid  him;  so  I  will  now  explain 
exactly  what  I  mean.  In  defining  the  essential  at- 
tributes of  God,  I  said  he  was  a  personality  lying 
outside  our  own  and  other  than  us,  —  a  power  not 
ourselves.  Now,  the  attempts  to  fly  beyond  theism, 
of  which  I  speak,  are  attempts  to  get  over  this  ulti- 
mate duality  of  God  and  his  believer,  and  to  trans- 
form it  into  some  sort  or  other  of  identity.  If  infra- 
theistic  ways  of  looking  on  the  world  leave  it  in  the 
third  person,  a  mere  it ;  and  if  theism  turns  the  it 
into  a  thou,  —  so  we  may  say  that  these  other  theories 
try  to  cover  it  with  the  mantle  of  the  first  person,  and 
to  make  it  a  part  of  me. 

I  am  well  aware  that  I  begin  here  to  tread  on 
ground  in  which  trenchant  distinctions  may  easily 
seem  to  mutilate  the  facts. 

That  sense  of  emotional  reconciliation  with  God 
which  characterizes  the  highest  moments  of  the 
theistic  consciousness  may  be  described  as  '  oneness ' 
with  him,  and  so  from  the  very  bosom  of  theism  a 


Reflex  Action  and  Theism.  135 

monistic  doctrine  seem  to  arise.  But  this  conscious- 
ness of  self-surrender,  of  absolute  practical  union 
between  one's  self  and  the  divine  object  of  one's  con- 
templation, is  a  totally  different  thing  from  any  sort 
of  substantial  identity.  Still  the  object  God  and  the 
subject  I  are  two.  Still  I  simply  come  upon  him,  and 
find  his  existence  given  to  me ;  and  the  climax  of  my 
practical  union  with  what  is  given,  forms  at  the  same 
time  the  climax  of  my  perception  that  as  a  numerical 
fact  of  existence  I  am  something  radically  other  than 
the  Divinity  with  whose  effulgence  I  am  filled. 

Now,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  only  sort  of  union  of 
creature  with  creator  with  which  theism,  properly  so 
called,  comports,  is  of  this  emotional  and  practical 
kind ;  and  it  is  based  unchangeably  on  the  empirical 
fact  that  the  thinking  subject  and  the  object  thought 
are  numerically  two.  How  my  mind  and  will,  which 
are  not  God,  can  yet  cognize  and  leap  to  meet  him, 
how  I  ever  came  to  be  so  separate  from  him,  and  how 
God  himself  came  to  be  at  all,  are  problems  that  for 
the  theist  can  remain  unsolved  and  insoluble  forever. 
It  is  sufficient  for  him  to  know  that  he  himself  simply 
is,  and  needs  God  ;  and  that  behind  this  universe  God 
simply  is  and  will  be  forever,  and  will  in  some  way 
hear  his  call.  In  the  practical  assurance  of  these 
empirical  facts,  without  '  Erkentnisstheorie '  or  philo- 
sophical ontology,  without  metaphysics  of  emanation 
or  creation  to  justify  or  make  them  more  intelligible, 
in  the  blessedness  of  their  mere  acknowledgment  as 
given,  lie  all  the  peace  and  power  he  craves.  The 
floodgates  of  the  religious  life  are  opened,  and  the  full 
currents  can  pour  through. 

It  is  this  empirical  and  practical  side  of  the  theistic 
position,  its  theoretic  chastity  and  modesty,  which  I 


136          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

wish  to  accentuate  here.  The  highest  flights  of  the- 
istic  mysticism,  far  from  pretending  to  penetrate  the 
secrets  of  the  me  and  the  thou  in  worship,  and  to 
transcend  the  dualism  by  an  act  of  intelligence,  sim- 
ply turn  their  backs  on  such  attempts.  The  problem 
for  them  has  simply  vanished,  —  vanished  from  the 
sight  of  an  attitude  which  refuses  to  notice  such  futile 
theoretic  difficulties.  Get  but  that  "  peace  of  God 
which  passeth  understanding,"  and  the  questions  of 
the  understanding  will  cease  from  puzzling  and  pedan- 
tic scruples  be  at  rest.  In  other  words,  theistic  mys- 
ticism, that  form  of  theism  which  at  first  sight  seems 
most  to  have  transcended  the  fundamental  otherness 
of  God  from  man,  has  done  it  least  of  all  in  the  theo- 
retic way.  The  pattern  of  its  procedure  is  precisely 
that  of  the  simplest  man  dealing  with  the  simplest 
fact  of  his  environment.  Both  he  and  the  theist  tarry 
in  department  Two  of  their  minds  only  so  long  as  is 
necessary  to  define  what  is  the  presence  that  con- 
fronts them.  The  theist  decides  that  its  character  is 
such  as  to  be  fitly  responded  to  on  his  part  by  a 
religious  reaction;  and  into  that  reaction  he  forth- 
with pours  his  soul.  His  insight  into  the  what  of  life 
leads  to  results  so  immediately  and  intimately  rational 
that  the  why,  the  how,  and  the  whence  of  it  are  ques- 
tions that  lose  all  urgency.  '  Gefiihl  ist  Alles,'  Faust 
says.  The  channels  of  department  Three  have  drained 
those  of  department  Two  of  their  contents ;  and  hap- 
piness over  the  fact  that  being  has  made  itself  what 
it  is,  evacuates  all  speculation  as  to  how  it  could  make 
itself  at  all. 

But  now,  although  to  most  human  minds  such  a 
position  as  this  will  be  the  position  of  rational  equi- 
librium, it  is  not  difficult  to  bring  forward  certain 


Reflex  Action  and  Theism.  137 

considerations,  in  the  light  of  which  so  simple  and 
practical  a  mental  movement  begins  to  seem  rather 
short-winded  and  second-rate  and  devoid  of  intellec- 
tual style.  This  easy  acceptance  of  an  opaque  limit 
to  our  speculative  insight ;  this  satisfaction  with  a  Be- 
ing whose  character  we  simply  apprehend  without 
comprehending  anything  more  about  him,  and  with 
whom  after  a  certain  point  our  dealings  can  be  only 
of  a  volitional  and  emotional  sort ;  above  all,  this  sit- 
ting down  contented  with  a  blank  unmediated  dualism, 
—  are  they  not  the  very  picture  of  unfaithfulness  to 
the  rights  and  duties  of  our  theoretic  reason? 

Surely,  if  the  universe  is  reasonable  (and  we  must 
believe  that  it  is  so),  it  must  be  susceptible,  poten- 
tially at  least,  of  being  reasoned  out  to  the  last  drop 
without  residuum.  Is  it  not  rather  an  insult  to  the 
very  word  '  rational '  to  say  that  the  rational  character 
of  the  universe  and  its  creator  means  no  more  than 
that  we  practically  feel  at  home  in  their  presence,  and 
that  our  powers  are  a  match  for  their  demands  ?  Do 
they  not  in  fact  demand  to  be  understood  by  us  still 
more  than  to  be  reacted  on?  Is  not  the  unparalleled 
development  of  department  Two  of  the  mind  in  man 
his  crowning  glory  and  his  very  essence ;  and  may 
not  the  knowing  of  the  truth  be  his  absolute  vocation? 
And  if  it  is,  ought  he  flatly  to  acquiesce  in  a  spiritual 
life  of  '  reflex  type,'  whose  form  is  no  higher  than 
that  of  the  life  that  animates  his  spinal  cord,  —  nay, 
indeed,  that  animates  the  writhing  segments  of  any 
mutilated  worm? 

It  is  easy  to  see  how  such  arguments  and  queries 
may  result  in  the  erection  of  an  ideal  of  our  mental 
destiny,  far  different  from  the  simple  and  practical 
religious  one  we  have  described.  We  may  well  begin 


138          Essays  in   Popular  Philosophy. 

to  ask  whether  such  things  as  practical  reactions  can 
be  the  final  upshot  and  purpose  of  all  our  cogni- 
tive energy.  Mere  outward  acts,  changes  in  the  posi- 
tion of  parts  of  matter  (for  they  are  nothing  else), 
can  they  possibly  be  the  culmination  and  consumma- 
tion of  our  relations  with  the  nature  of  things?  Can 
they  possibly  form  a  result  to  which  our  godlike 
powers  of  insight  shall  be  judged  merely  subservient? 
Such  an  idea,  if  we  scan  it  closely,  soon  begins  to 
seem  rather  absurd.  Whence  this  piece  of  matter 
comes  and  whither  that  one  goes,  what  difference 
ought  that  to  make  to  the  nature  of  things,  except 
so  far  as  with  the  comings  and  the  goings  our  won- 
derful inward  conscious  harvest  may  be  reaped? 

And  so,  very  naturally  and  gradually,  one  may  be 
led  from  the  theistic  and  practical  point  of  view  to 
what  I  shall  call  the  gnostical  one.  We  may  think 
that  department  Three  of  the  mind,  witji  its  doings  of 
right  and  its  doings  of  wrong,  must  be  there  only  to 
serve  department  Two ;  and  we  may  suspect  that  the 
sphere  of  our  activity  exists  for  no  other  purpose  than 
to  illumine  our  cognitive  consciousness  by  the  expe- 
rience o^  its  results.  Are  not  all  sense  and  all  emo- 
tion at  bottom  but  turbid  and  perplexed  modes  of  what 
in  its  clarified  shape  is  intelligent  cognition?  Is  not 
all  experience  just  the  eating  of  the  fruit  of  the  tree 
of  knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  and  nothing  more? 

These  questions  fan  the  fire  of  an  unassuageable 
gnostic  thirst,  which  is  as  far  removed  from  theism  in 
one  direction  as  agnosticism  was  removed  from  it  in 
the  other ;  and  which  aspires  to  nothing  less  than  an 
absolute  unity  of  knowledge  with  its  object,  and  refuses 
to  be  satisfied  short  of  a  fusion  and  solution  and  satu- 
ration of  both  impression  and  action  with  reason,  and 


Reflex  Action  and  Theism.  139 

an  absorption  of  all  three  departments  of  the  mind 
into  one.  Time  would  fail  us  to-day  (even  had  I  the 
learning,  which  I  have  not)  to  speak  of  gnostic  sys- 
tems in  detail.  The  aim  of  all  of  them  is  to  shadow 
forth  a  sort  of  process  by  which  spirit,  emerging  from 
its  beginnings  and  exhausting  the  whole  circle  of  finite 
experience  in  its  sweep,  shall  at  last  return  and  pos- 
sess itself  as  its  own  object  at  the  climax  of  its  career. 
This  climax  is  the  religious  consciousness.  At  the 
giddy  height  of  this  conception,  whose  latest  and 
best  known  form  is  the  Hegelian  philosophy,  definite 
words  fail  to  serve  their  purpose;  and  the  ultimate 
goal,  —  where  object  and  subject,  worshipped  and  wor- 
shipper, facts  and  the  knowledge  of  them,  fall  into 
one,  and  where  no  other  is  left  outstanding  beyond  this 
one  that  alone  is,  and  that  we  may  call  indifferently 
act  or  fact,  reality  or  idea,  God  or  creation,  —  this 
goal,  I  say,  has  to  be  adumbrated  to  our  halting  and 
gasping  intelligence  by  coarse  physical  metaphors, 
'  positings '  and  '  self-returnings  '  and  '  removals  '  and 
'settings  free,' which  hardly  help  to  make  the  matter 
clear. 

i  But  from  the  midst  of  the  curdling  and  the  circling 
of  it  all  we  seem  dimly  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  a  state 
in  which  the  reality  to  be  known  and  the  power  of 
knowing  shall  have  become  so  mutually  adequate 
that  each  exhaustively  is  absorbed  by  the  other  and 
the  twain  become  one  flesh,  and  in  which  the  light 
shall  somehow  have  soaked  up  all  the  outer  darkness 
into  its  own  ubiquitous  beams.  Like  all  headlong 
ideals,  this  apotheosis  of  the  bare  conceiving  faculty 
has  its  depth  and  wildness,  its  pang  and  its  charm. 
To  many  it  sings  a  truly  siren  strain ;  and  so  long 
as  it  is  held  only  as  a  postulate,  as  a  mere  vanishing 


140          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

point  to  give  perspective  to  our  intellectual  aim,  it  is 
hard  to  see  any  empirical  title  by  which  we  may 
deny  the  legitimacy  of  gnosticism's  claims.  That  we 
are  not  as  yet  near  the  goal  it  prefigures  can  never  be 
a  reason  why  we  might  not  continue  indefinitely  to 
approach  it;  and  to  all  sceptical  arguments,  drawn 
from  our  reason's  actual  finiteness,  gnosticism  can 
still  oppose  its  indomitable  faith  in  the  infinite  char- 
acter of  its  potential  destiny. 

Now,  here  it  is  that  the  physiologist's  generaliza- 
tion, as  it  seems  to  me,  may  fairly  come  in,  and  by 
ruling  any  such  extravagant  faith  out  of  court  help  to 
legitimate  our  personal  mistrust  of  its  pretensions. 
I  confess  that  I  myself  have  always  had  a  great  mis- 
trust of  the  pretensions  of  the  gnostic  faith.  Not 
only  do  I  utterly  fail  to  understand  what  a  cognitive 
faculty  erected  into  the  absolute  of  being,  with  itself 
as  its  object,  can  mean;  but  even  if  we  grant  it  a 
being  other  than  itself  for  object,  I  cannot  reason  my- 
self out  of  the  belief  that  however  familiar  and  at 
home  we  might  become  with  the  character  of  that 
being,  the  bare  being  of  it,  the  fact  that  it  is  there  at 
all,  must  always  be  something  blankly  given  and  pre- 
supposed in  order  that  conception  may  begin  its 
work ;  must  in  short  lie  beyond  speculation,  and  not 
be  enveloped  in  its  sphere. 

Accordingly,  it  is  with  no  small  pleasure  that  as  a 
student  of  physiology  and  psychology  I  find  the  only 
lesson  I  can  learn  from  these  sciences  to  be  one  that 
corroborates  these  convictions.  From  its  first  dawn 
to  its  highest  actual  attainment,  we  find  that  the  cog- 
nitive faculty,  where  it  appears  to  exist  at  all,  appears 
but  as  one  element  in  an  organic  mental  whole,  and 
as  a  minister  to  higher  mental  powers,  —  the  powers 


Reflex  Action  and  Theism.  141 

of  will.  Such  a  thing  as  its  emancipation  and  abso- 
lution from  these  organic  relations  receives  no  faint- 
est color  of  plausibility  from  any  fact  we  can  discern. 
Arising  as  a  part,  in  a  mental  and  objective  world 
which  are  both  larger  than  itself,  it  must,  whatever  its 
powers  of  growth  may  be  (and  I  am  far  from  wishing 
to  disparage  them),  remain  a  part  to  the  end.  This 
is  the  character  of  the  cognitive  element  in  all  the 
mental  life  we  know,  and  we  have  no  reason  to  sup- 
pose that  that  character  will  ever  change.  On  the 
contrary,  it  is  more  than  probable  that  to  the  end  of 
time  our  power  of  moral  and  volitional  response  to 
the  nature  of  things  will  be  the  deepest  organ  of  com- 
munication therewith  we  shall  ever  possess.  In  every 
being  that  is  real  there  is  something  external  to,  and 
sacred  from,  the  grasp  of  every  other.  God's  being 
is  sacred  from  ours.  To  co-operate  with  his  creation 
by  the  best  and  Tightest  response  seems  all  he  wants 
of  us.  In  such  co-operation  with  his  purposes,  not  in 
any  chimerical  speculative  conquest  of  him,  not  in 
any  theoretic  drinking  of  him  up,  must  lie  the  real 
meaning  of  our  destiny. 

This  is  nothing  new.  All  men  know  it  at  those  rare 
moments  when  the  soul  sobers  herself,  and  leaves  off 
her  chattering  and  protesting  and  insisting  about  this 
formula  or  that.  In  the  silence  of  our  theories  we 
then  seem  to  listen,  and  to  hear  something  like  the 
pulse  of  Being  beat;  and  it  is  borne  in  upon  us  that 
the  mere  turning  of  the  character,  the  dumb  willing- 
ness to  suffer  and  to  serve  this  universe,  is  more  than 
all  theories  about  it  put  together.  The  most  any 
theory  about  it  can  do  is  to  bring  us  to  that.  Cer- 
tain it  is  that  the  acutest  theories,  the  greatest  intel- 
lectual power,  the  most  elaborate  education,  are  a 


142          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

sheer  mockery  when,  as  too  often  happens,  they  feed 
mean  motives  and  a  nerveless  will.  And  it  is  equally 
certain  that  a  resolute  moral  energy,  no  matter  how 
inarticulate  or  unequipped  with  learning  its  owner 
may  be,  extorts  from  us  a  respect  we  should  never  pay 
were  we  .not  satisfied  that  the  essential  root  of  human 
personality  lay  there. 

I  have  sketched  my  subject  in  the  briefest  outlines ; 
but  still  I  hope  you  will  agree  that  I  have  established 
my  point,  and  that  the  physiological  view  of  mental- 
ity, so  far  from  invalidating,  can  but  give  aid  and  com- 
fort to  the  theistic  attitude  of  mind.  Between  agnos- 
ticism and  gnosticism,  theism  stands  midway,  and 
holds  to  what  is  true  in  each.  With  agnosticism,  it 
goes  so  far  as  to  confess  that  we  cannot  know  how 
Being  made  itself  or  us.  With  gnosticism,  it  goes 
so  far  as  to  insist  that  we  can  know  Being's  character 
when  made,  and  how  it  asks  us  to  behave. 

If  any  one  fear  that  in  insisting  so  strongly  that  be- 
havior is  the  aim  and  end  of  every  sound  philosophy 
I  have  curtailed  the  dignity  and  scope  of  the  specula- 
tive function  in  us,  I  can  only  reply  that  in  this  ascer- 
tainment of  the  character  of  Being  lies  an  almost  infi- 
nite speculative  task.  Let  the  voluminous  considera- 
tions by  which  all  modern  thought  converges  toward 
idealistic  or  pan-psychic  conclusions  speak  for  me. 
Let  the  pages  of  a  Hodgson,  of.  a  Lotze,  of  a  Re- 
nouvier,  reply  whether  within  the  limits  drawn  by 
purely  empirical  theism  the  speculative  faculty  finds 
not,  and  shall  not  always  find,  enough  to  do.  But  do 
it  little  or  much,  its  place  in  a  philosophy  is  always 
the  same,  and  is  set  by  the  structural  form  of  the 
mind.  Philosophies,  whether  expressed  in  sonnets  or 


Reflex  Action  and  Theism.  143 

systems,  all  must  wear  this  form.  The  thinker  starts 
from  some  experience  of  the  practical  world,  and  asks 
its  meaning.  He  launches  himself  upon  the  specula- 
tive sea,  and  makes  a  voyage  long  or  short.  He  as- 
cends into  the  empyrean,  and  communes  with  the 
eternal  essences.  But  whatever  his  achievements  and 
discoveries  be  while  gone,  the  utmost  result  they  can 
issue  in  is  some  new  practical  maxim  or  resolve,  or 
the  denial  of  some  old  one,  with  which  inevitably  he 
is  sooner  or  later  washed  ashore  on  the  terra  firma  of 
concrete  life  again. 

Whatever  thought  takes  this  voyage  is  a  philosophy. 
We  have  seen  how  theism  takes  it.  And  in  the  phi- 
losophy of  a  thinker  who,  though  long  neglected,  is 
doing  much  to  renovate  the  spiritual  life  of  his  native 
France  to-day  (I  mean  Charles  Renouvier,  whose 
writings  ought  to  be  better  known  among  us  than  they 
are),  we  have  an  instructive  example  of  the  way  in 
which  this  very  empirical  element  in  theism,  its  con- 
fession of  an  ultimate  opacity  in  things,  of  a  dimen- 
sion of  being  which  escapes  our  theoretic  control,  may 
suggest  a  most  definite  practical  conclusion,  —  this 
one,  namely,  that  '  our  wills  are  free.'  I  will  say  noth- 
ing of  Renouvier's  line  of  reasoning;  it  is  contained 
in  many  volumes  which  I  earnestly  recommend  to  your 
attention.1  But  to  enforce  my  doctrine  that  the  num- 
ber of  volumes  is  not  what  makes  the  philosophy,  let 
me  conclude  by  recalling  to  you  the  little  poem  of 
Tennyson,  published  last  year,  in  which  the  specula- 
tive voyage  is  made,  and  the  same  conclusion  reached 
in  a  few  lines :  — 

1  Especially  the  Essais  de  Critique  Generale,  ame  Edition,  6  vols., 
I2mo,  Paris,  1875 »  ar>d  the  Esquisse  d'une  Classification  Systematiqufc 
d<js  Doctrines  Philosophiques,  2  vols.,  Svo,  Paris,  1885. 


144         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

•*  Out  of  the  deep,  my  child,  out  of  the  deep, 
From  that  great  deep  before  our  world  begins, 
Whereon  the  Spirit  of  God  moves  as  he  will,  — • 
Out  of  the  deep,  my  child,  out  of  the  deep, 
From  that  true  world  within  the  world  we  see, 
Whereof  our  world  is  but  the  bounding  shore, — 
Out  of  the  deep,  Spirit,  out  of  the  deep, 
With  this  ninth  moon  that  sends  the  hidden  sun 
Down  yon  dark  sea,  thou  comest,  darling  boy. 
For  in  the  world  which  is  not  ours,  they  said, 
'  Let  us  make  man,'  and  that  which  should  be  man, 
From  that  one  light  no  man  can  look  upon, 
Drew  to  this  shore  lit  by  the  suns  and  moons 
And  all  the  shadows.     O  dear  Spirit,  half-lost 
In  thine  own  shadow  and  this  fleshly  sign 
That  thou  art  thou,  —  who  wailest  being  born 
And  banish'd  into  mystery,  .  .  . 

.  .  .  our  mortal  veil 

And  shattered  phantom  of  that  Infinite  One, 
Who  made  thee  unconceivably  thyself 
Out  of  his  whole  world-self  and  all  in  all,  — 
Live  thou,  and  of  the  grain  and  husk,  the  grape 
And  ivyberry,  choose ;  and  still  depart 
From  death  to  death  through  life  and  life,  and  find 
Nearer  and  ever  nearer  Him  who  wrought 
Not  matter,  nor  the  finite-infinite, 
But  this  main  miracle,  that  thou  art  thou, 
With  power  on  thine  own  act  and  on  the  world!* 


The  Dilemma  of  Determinism.         145 


THE  DILEMMA  OF  DETERMINISM.1 

A  COMMON  opinion  prevails  that  the  juice  has 
ages  ago  been  pressed  out  of  the  free-will  con- 
troversy, and  that  no  new  champion  can  do  more  than 
warm  up  stale  arguments  which  every  one  has  heard. 
This  is  a  radical  mistake.  I  know  of  no  subject  less 
worn  out,  or  in  which  inventive  genius  has  a  better 
chance  of  breaking  open  new  ground,  —  not,  perhaps, 
of  forcing  a  conclusion  or  of  coercing  assent,  but  of 
deepening  our  sense  of  what  the  issue  between  the 
two  parties  really  is,  of  what  the  ideas  of  fate  and  of 
free-will  imply.  At  our  very  side  almost,  in  the  past 
few  years,  we  have  seen  falling  in  rapid  succession 
from  the  press  works  that  present  the  alternative  in 
entirely  novel  lights.  Not  to  speak  of  the  English 
disciples  of  Hegel,  such  as  Green  and  Bradley;  not 
to  speak  of  Hinton  and  Hodgson,  nor  of  Hazard  here, 
—  we  see  in  the  writings  of  Renouvier,  Fouillee,  and 
Delbceuf 2  how  completely  changed  and  refreshed  is 
the  form  of  all  the  old  disputes.  I  cannot  pretend  to 
vie  in  originality  with  any  of  the  masters  I  have  named, 
and  my  ambition  limits  itself  to  just  one  little  point.  If 
I  can  make  two  of  the  necessarily  implied  corollaries 

1  An  Address  to  the  Harvard  Divinity  Students,  published  in  the 
Unitarian  Review  for  September,  1884. 

2  And  I  may  now  say  Charles  S.  Peirce,  —  see  the  Monist,  for 
1892-93. 

10 


146          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

of  determinism  clearer  to  you  than  they  have  been 
made  before,  I  shall  have  made  it  possible  for  you  to 
decide  for  or  against  that  doctrine  with  a  better  under- 
standing of  what  you  are  about.  And  if  you  prefer 
not  to  decide  at  all,  but  to  remain  doubters,  you  will 
at  least  see  more  plainly  what  the  subject  of  your 
hesitation  is.  I  thus  disclaim  openly  on  the  threshold 
all  pretension  to  prove  to  you  that  the  freedom  of  the 
will  is  true.  The  most  I  hope  is  to  induce  some  of 
you  to  follow  my  own  example  in  assuming  it  true, 
and  acting  as  if  it  were  true.  If  it  be  true,  it  seems  to 
me  that  this  is  involved  in  the  strict  logic  of  the  case. 
Its  truth  ought  not  to  be  forced  willy-nilly  down  our 
indifferent  throats.  It  ought  to  be  freely  espoused  by 
men  who  can  equally  well  turn  their  backs  upon  it. 
In  other  words,  our  first  act  of  freedom,  if  we  are  free, 
ought  in  all  inward  propriety  to  be  to  affirm  that  we 
are  free.  This  should  exclude,  it  seems  to  me,  from 
the  free-will  side  of  the  question  all  hope  of  a  coercive 
demonstration,  —  a  demonstration  which  I,  for  one, 
am  perfectly  contented  to  go  without. 

With  thus  much  understood  at  the  outset,  we  can 
advance.  But  not  without  one  more  point  under- 
stood as  well.  The  arguments  I  am  about  to  urge 
all  proceed  on  two  suppositions  :  first,  when  we  make 
theories  about  the  world  and  discuss  them  with  one 
another,  we  do  so  in  order  to  attain  a  conception  of 
things  which  shall  give  us  subjective  satisfaction ;  and, 
second,  if  there  be  two  conceptions,  and  the  one 
seems  to  us,  on  the  whole,  more  rational  than  the 
other,  we  are  entitled  to  suppose  that  the  more  ra- 
tional one  is  the  truer  of  the  two.  I  hope  that  you 
are  all  willing  to  make  these  suppositions  with  me ; 


The  Dilemma  of  Determinism.          147 

for  I  am  afraid  that  if  there  be  any  of  you  here  who 
are  not,  they  will  find  little  edification  in  the  rest  of 
what  I  have  to  say.  I  cannot  stop  to  argue  the 
point;  but  I  myself  believe  that  all  the  magnificent 
achievements  of  mathematical  and  physical  science  — 
our  doctrines  of  evolution,  of  uniformity  of  law,  and 
the  rest  —  proceed  from  our  indomitable  desire  to  cast 
the  world  into  a  more  rational  shape  in  our  minds 
than  the  shape  into  which  it  is  thrown  there  by  the 
crude  order  of  our  experience.  The  world  has  shown 
itself,  to  a  great  extent,  plastic  to  this  demand  of  ours 
for  rationality.  How  much  farther  it  will  show  itself 
plastic  no  one  can  say.  Our  only  means  of  finding  out 
is  to  try ;  and  I,  for  one,  feel  as  free  to  try  conceptions 
of  moral  as  of  mechanical  or  of  logical  rationality. 
If  a  certain  formula  for  expressing  the  nature  of  the 
world  violates  my  moral  demand,  I  shall  feel  as  free 
to  throw  it  overboard,  or  at  least  to  doubt  it,  as  if  it 
disappointed  my  demand  for  uniformity  of  sequence, 
for  example ;  the  one  demand  being,  so  far  as  I  can 
see,  quite  as  subjective  and  emotional  as  the  other  is. 
The  principle  of  causality,  for  example,  —  what  is  it 
but  a  postulate,  an  empty  name  covering  simply  a 
demand  that  the  sequence  of  events  shall  some  day 
manifest  a  deeper  kind  of  belonging  of  one  thing  with 
another  than  the  mere  arbitrary  juxtaposition  which 
now  phenomenally  appears?  It  is  as  much  an  altar 
to  an  unknown  god  as  the  one  that  Saint  Paul  found 
at  Athens.  All  our  scientific  and  philosophic  ideals 
are  altars  to  unknown  gods.  Uniformity  is  as  much 
so  as  is  free-will.  If  this  be  admitted,  we  can  debate 
on  even  terms.  But  if  any  one  pretends  that  while 
freedom  and  variety  are,  in  the  first  instance,  subjec- 
tive demands,  necessity  and  uniformity  are  something 


148          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

altogether  different,  I  do  not  see  how  we  can  debate 
at  all.1 

To  begin,  then,  I  must  suppose  you  acquainted 
with  all  the  usual  arguments  on  the  subject.  I  can- 
not stop  to  take  up  the  old  proofs  from  causation, 
from  statistics,  from  the  certainty  with  which  we 
can  foretell  one  another's  conduct,  from  the  fixity  of 
character,  and  all  the  rest.  But  there  are  two  words 
which  usually  encumber  these  classical  arguments, 


1  "  The  whole  history  of  popular  beliefs  about  Nature  refutes  the 
notion  that  the  thought  of  a  universal  physical  order  can  possibly 
have  arisen  from  the  purely  passive  reception  and  association  of  par- 
ticular perceptions.  Indubitable  as  it  is  that  men  infer  from  known 
cases  to  unknown,  it  is  equally  certain  that  this  procedure,  if  restricted 
to  the  phenomenal  materials  that  spontaneously  offer  themselves, 
would  never  have  led  to  the  belief  in  a  general  uniformity,  but  only 
to  the  belief  that  law  and  lawlessness  rule  the  world  in  motley  alter- 
nation. From  the  point  of  view  of  strict  experience,  nothing  exists 
but  the  sum  of  particular  perceptions,  with  their  coincidences  on  the 
one  hand,  their  contradictions  on  the  other. 

"  That  there  is  more  order  in  the  world  than  appears  at  first  sight 
is  not  discovered  till  the  order  is  looked  for.  The  first  impulse  to  look 
for  it  proceeds  from  practical  needs :  where  ends  must  be  attained, 
we  must  know  trustworthy  means  which  infallibly  possess  a  property, 
or  produce  a  result.  But  the  practical  need  is  only  the  first  occasion 
for  our  reflection  on  the  conditions  of  true  knowledge ;  and  even  were 
there  no  such  need,  motives  would  still  be  present  for  carrying  us  be- 
yond the  stage  of  mere  association.  For  not  with  an  equal  interest, 
or  rather  with  an  equal  lack  of  interest,  does  man  contemplate  those 
natural  processes  in  which  a  thing  is  linked  with  its  former  mate, 
and  those  in  which  it  is  linked  to  something  else.  The  former  processes 
harmonize  with  the  conditions  of  his  own  thinking:  the  latter  do  not. 
In  the  former,  his  concepts,  general  judgments,  and  inferences  apply  to 
reality :  in  the  latter,  they  have  no  such  application.  And  thus  the 
intellectual  satisfaction  which  at  first  comes  to  him  without  reflection, 
at  last  excites  in  him  the  conscious  wish  to  find  realized  throughout 
the  entire  phenomenal  world  those  rational  continuities,  uniformities, 
and  necessities  which  are  the  fundamental  element  and  guiding  prin- 
ciple of  his  own  thought."  (Sigwart,  Logik,  bd.  2,  s.  382.) 


The  Dilemma  of  Determinism.          149 

and  which  we  must  immediately  dispose  of  if  we 
are  to  make  any  progress.  One  is  the  eulogistic 
word  freedom,  and  the  other  is  the  opprobrious  word 
chance.  The  word  '  chance '  I  wish  to  keep,  but  I 
wish  to  get  rid  of  the  word  '  freedom."  Its  eulogistic 
associations  have  so  far  overshadowed  all  the  rest  of 
its  meaning  that  both  parties  claim  the  sole  right  to 
use  it,  and  determinists  to-day  insist  that  they  alone 
are  freedom's  champions.  Old-fashioned  determin- 
ism was  what  we  may  call  hard  determinism.  It  did 
not  shrink  from  such  words  as  fatality,  bondage  of 
the  will,  necessitation,  and  the  like.  Nowadays,  we 
have  a  soft  determinism  which  abhors  harsh  words, 
and,  repudiating  fatality,  necessity,  and  even  prede- 
termination, says  that  its  real  name  is  freedom ;  for 
freedom  is  only  necessity  understood,  and  bondage 
to  the  highest  is  identical  with  true  freedom.  Even 
a  writer  as  little  used  to  making  capital  out  of  soft 
words  as  Mr.  Hodgson  hesitates  not  to  call  himself  a 
'  free-will  determinist.' 

Now,  all  this  is  a  quagmire  of  evasion  under  which 
the  real  issue  of  fact  has  been  entirely  smothered. 
Freedom  in  all  these  senses  presents  simply  no  prob- 
lem at  all.  No  matter  what  the  soft  determinist  mean 
by  it,  —  whether  he  mean  the  acting  without  external 
constraint;  whether  he  mean  the  acting  rightly,  or 
whether  he  mean  the  acquiescing  in  the  law  of  the 
whole,  —  who  cannot  answer  him  that  sometimes  we 
are  free  and  sometimes  we  are  not?  But  there  is  a 
problem,  an  issue  of  fact  and  not  of  words,  an  issue 
of  the  most  momentous  importance,  which  is  often 
decided  without  discussion  in  one  sentence,  —  nay, 
in  one  clause  of  a  sentence,  —  by  those  very  writers 
tvho  spin  out  whole  chapters  in  their  efforts  to  show 


150          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

what  '  true  '  freedom  is ;  and  that  is  the  question  of 
determinism,  about  which  we  are  to  talk  to-night. 

Fortunately,  no  ambiguities  hang  about  this  word 
or  about  its  opposite,  indeterminism.  Both  desig- 
nate an  outward  way  in  which  things  may  happen,  and 
their  cold  and  mathematical  sound  has  no  sentimental 
associations  that  can  bribe  our  partiality  either  way  in 
advance.  Now,  evidence  of  an  external  kind  to  de- 
cide between  determinism  and  indeterminism  is,  as 
I  intimated  a  while  back,  strictly  impossible  to  find. 
Let  us  look  at  the  difference  between  them  and  see 
for  ourselves.  What  does  determinism  profess? 

It  professes  that  those  parts  of  the  universe  already 
laid  down  absolutely  appoint  and  decree  what  the 
other  parts  shall  be.  The  future  has  no  ambiguous 
possibilities  hidden  in  its  womb :  the  part  we  call  the 
present  is  compatible  with  only  one  totality.  Any 
other  future  complement  than  the  one  fixed  from 
eternity  is  impossible.  The  whole  is  in  each  and 
every  part,  and  welds  it  with  the  rest  into  an  abso- 
lute unity,  an  iron  block,  in  which  there  can  be  no 
equivocation  or  shadow  of  turning. 

"  With  earth's  first  clay  they  did  the  last  man  knead, 
And  there  of  the  last  harvest  sowed  the  seed. 
And  the  first  morning  of  creation  wrote 
What  the  last  dawn  of  reckoning  shall  read." 

Indeterminism,  on  the  contrary,  says  that  the  parts 
have  a  certain  amount  of  loose  play  on  one  another,  so 
that  the  laying  down  of  one  of  them  does  not  neces- 
sarily determine  what  the  others  shall  be.  It  admits 
that  possibilities  may  be  in  excess  of  actualities,  and 
that  things  not  yet  revealed  to  our  knowledge  may 
really  in  themselves  be  ambiguous.  Of  two  alter- 


The  Dilemma  of  Determinism.          151 

native  futures  which  we  conceive,  both  may  now  be 
really  possible ;  and  the  one  become  impossible  only 
at  the  very  moment  when  the  other  excludes  it  by 
becoming  real  itself.  Indeterminism  thus  denies  the 
world  to  be  one  unbending  unit  of  fact.  It  says  there 
is  a  certain  ultimate  pluralism  in  it;  and,  so  saying, 
it  corroborates  our  ordinary  unsophisticated  view  of 
things.  To  that  view,  actualities  seem  to  float  in  a 
wider  sea  of  possibilities  from  out  of  which  they  are 
chosen ;  and,  somewhere,  indeterminism  says,  such 
possibilities  exist,  and  form  a  part  of  truth. 

Determinism,  on  the  contrary,  says  they  exist  no- 
where, and  that  necessity  on  the  one  hand  and  im- 
possibility on  the  other  are  the  sole  categories  of  the 
real.  Possibilities  that  fail  to  get  realized  are,  for 
determinism,  pure  illusions:  they  never  were  pos- 
sibilities at  all.  There  is  nothing  inchoate,  it  says, 
about  this  universe  of  ours,  all  that  was  or  is  or  shall 
be  actual  in  it  having  been  from  eternity  virtually 
there.  The  cloud  of  alternatives  our  minds  escort 
this  mass  of  actuality  withal  is  a  cloud  of  sheer  decep- 
tions, to  which  '  impossibilities '  is  the  only  name  that 
rightfully  belongs. 

The  issue,  it  will  be  seen,  is  a  perfectly  sharp  one, 
which  no  eulogistic  terminology  can  smear  over  or 
wipe  out.  The  truth  must  lie  with  one  side  or  the 
other,  and  its  lying  with  one  side  makes  the  other 
false. 

The  question  relates  solely  to  the  existence  of  pos- 
sibilities, in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term,  as  things  that 
may,  but  need  not,  be.  Both  sides  admit  that  a  voli- 
tion, for  instance,  has  occurred.  The  indeterminists 
say  another  volition  might  have  occurred  in  its  place : 
the  determinists  swear  that  nothing  could  possibly 


152          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

have  occurred  in  its  place.  Now,  can  science  be 
called  in  to  tell  us  which  of  these  two  point-blank 
contradicters  of  each  other  is  right?  Science  pro- 
fesses to  draw  no  conclusions  but  such  as  are  based 
on  matters  of  fact,  things  that  have  actually  happened ; 
but  how  can  any  amount  of  assurance  that  something 
actually  happened  give  us  the  least  grain  of  informa- 
tion as  to  whether  another  thing  might  or  might  not 
have  happened  in  its  place  ?  Only  facts  can  be  proved 
by  other  facts.  With  things  that  are  possibilities  and 
not  facts,  facts  have  no  concern.  If  we  have  no  other 
evidence  than  the  evidence  of  existing  facts,  the  pos- 
sibility-question must  remain  a  mystery  never  to  be 
cleared  up. 

And  the  truth  is  that  facts  practically  have  hardly 
anything  to  do  with  making  us  either  determinists  or 
indeterminists.  Sure  enough,  we  make  a  flourish  of 
quoting  facts  this  way  or  that ;  and  if  we  are  deter- 
minists, we  talk  about  the  infallibility  with  which  we 
can  predict  one  another's  conduct;  while  if  we  are 
indeterminists,  we  lay  great  stress  on  the  fact  that  it 
is  just  because  we  cannot  foretell  one  another's  con- 
duct, either  in  war  or  statecraft  or  in  any  of  the  great 
and  small  intrigues  and  businesses  of  men,  that  life 
is  so  intensely  anxious  and  hazardous  a  game.  But 
who  does  not  see  the  wretched  insufficiency  of  this 
so-called  objective  testimony  on  both  sides?  What 
fills  up  the  gaps  in  our  minds  is  something  not  ob- 
jective, not  external.  What  divides  us  into  possibil- 
ity men  and  anti-possibility  men  is  different  faiths  or 
postulates,  —  postulates  of  rationality.  To  this  man 
the  world  seems  more  rational  with  possibilities  in 
it,  —  to  that  man  more  rational  with  possibilities  ex- 
cluded ;  and  talk  as  we  will  about  having  to  yield  to 


The  Dilemma  of  Determinism.         153 

evidence,  what  makes  us  monists  or  pluralists,  deter- 
minists  or  indeterminists,  is  at  bottom  always  some 
sentiment  like  this. 

The  stronghold  of  the  deterministic  sentiment  is 
the  antipathy  to  the  idea  of  chance.  As  soon  as  we 
begin  to  talk  indeterminism  to  our  friends,  we  find  a 
number  of  them  shaking  their  heads.  This  notion  of 
alternative  possibility,  they  say,  this  admission  that 
any  one  of  several  things  may  come  to  pass,  is,  after 
all,  only  a  roundabout  name  for  chance ;  and  chance  is 
something  the  notion  of  which  no  sane  mind  can  for 
an  instant  tolerate  in  the  world.  What  is  it,  they  ask, 
but  barefaced  crazy  unreason,  the  negation  of  intelli- 
gibility and  law?  And  if  the  slightest  particle  of  it 
exist  anywhere,  what  is  to  prevent  the  whole  fabric 
from  falling  together,  the  stars  from  going  out,  and 
chaos  from  recommencing  her  topsy-turvy  reign? 

Remarks  of  this  sort  about  chance  will  put  an  end 
to  discussion  as  quickly  as  anything  one  can  find. 
I  have  already  told  you  that  '  chance  '  was  a  word  I 
wished  to  keep  and  use.  Let  us  then  examine  exactly 
what  it  means,  and  see  whether  it  ought  to  be  such  a 
terrible  bugbear  to  us.  I  fancy  that  squeezing  the 
thistle  boldly  will  rob  it  of  its  sting. 

The  sting  of  the  word  '  chance '  seems  to  lie  in  the 
assumption  that  it  means  something  positive,  and 
that  if  anything  happens  by  chance,  it  must  needs  be 
something  of  an  intrinsically  irrational  and  preposter- 
ous sort.  Now,  chance  means  nothing  of  the  kind. 
It  is  a  purely  negative  and  relative  term,1  giving  us 

1  Speaking  technically,  it  is  a  word  with  a  positive  denotation,  but 
a  connotation  that  is  negative.  Other  things  must  be  silent  about 
what  it  is :  it  alone  can  decide  that  point  at  the  moment  in  which 
it  reveals  itself. 


154          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

no  information  about  that  of  which  it  is  predicated, 
except  that  it  happens  to  be  disconnected  with  some- 
thing else,  —  not  controlled,  secured,  or  necessitated 
by  other  things  in  advance  of  its  own  actual  presence. 
As  this  point  is  the  most  subtile  one  of  the  whole 
lecture,  and  at  the  same  time  the  point  on  which  all 
the  rest  hinges,  I  beg  you  to  pay  particular  attention 
to  it.  What  I  say  is  that  it  tells  us  nothing  about 
what  a  thing  may  be  in  itself  to  call  it  '  chance.'  It 
may  be  a  bad  thing,  it  may  be  a  good  thing.  It  may 
be  lucidity,  transparency,  fitness  incarnate,  matching 
the  whole  system  of  other  things,  when  it  has  once 
befallen,  in  an  unimaginably  perfect  way.  All  you 
mean  by  calling  it  '  chance '  is  that  this  is  not  guar- 
anteed, that  it  may  also  fall  out  otherwise.  For  the 
system  of  other  things  has  no  positive  hold  on  the 
chance-thing.  Its  origin  is  in  a  certain  fashion  nega- 
tive:  it  escapes,  and  says,  Hands  off!  coming,  when 
it  comes,  as  a  free  gift,  or  not  at  all. 

This  negativeness,  however,  and  this  opacity  of  the 
chance-thing  when  thus  considered  ab,  extra,  or  from 
the  point  of  view  of  previous  things  or  distant  things, 
do  not  preclude  its  having  any  amount  of  positive- 
ness  and  luminosity  from  within,  and  at  its  own  place 
and  moment.  All  that  its  chance-character  asserts 
about  it  is  that  there  is  something  in  it  really  of  its 
own,  something  that  is  not  the  unconditional  property 
of  the  whole.  If  the  whole  wants  this  property,  the 
whole  must  wait  till  it  can  get  it,  if  it  be  a  matter 
of  chance.  That  the  universe  may  actually  be  a  sort 
of  joint-stock  society  of  this  sort,  in  which  the  sharers 
have  both  limited  liabilities  and  limited  powers,  is  of 
course  a  simple  and  conceivable  notion. 

Nevertheless,  many  persons  talk  as  if  the  minutest 


The  Dilemma  of  Determinism.          155 

dose  of  disconnectedness  of  one  part  with  another, 
the  smallest  modicum  of  independence,  the  faintest 
tremor  of  ambiguity  about  the  future,  for  example, 
would  ruin  everything,  and  turn  this  goodly  universe 
into  a  sort  of  insane  sand-heap  or  nulliverse,  no  uni- 
verse at  all.  Since  future  human  volitions  are  as  a 
matter  of  fact  the  only  ambiguous  things  we  are 
tempted  to  believe  in,  let  us  stop  for  a  moment  to 
make  ourselves  sure  whether  their  independent  and 
accidental  character  need  be  fraught  with  such  direful 
consequences  to  the  universe  as  these. 

What  is  meant  by  saying  that  my  choice  of  which 
way  to  walk  home  after  the  lecture  is  ambiguous  and 
matter  of  chance  as  far  as  the  present  moment  is  con- 
cerned? It  means  that  both  Divinity  Avenue  and 
Oxford  Street  are  called ;  but  that  only  one,  and  that 
one  either  one,  shall  be  chosen.  Now,  I  ask  you  seri- 
ously to  suppose  that  this  ambiguity  of  my  choice  is 
real;  and  then  to  make  the  impossible  hypothesis 
that  the  choice  is  made  twice  over,  and  each  time 
falls  on  a  different  street.  In  other  words,  imagine 
that  I  first  walk  through  Divinity  Avenue,  and  then 
imagine  that  the  powers  governing  the  universe  anni- 
hilate ten  minutes  of  time  with  all  that  it  contained, 
and  set  me  back  at  the  door  of  this  hall  just  as  I  was 
before  the  choice  was  made.  Imagine  then  that, 
everything  else  being  the  same,  I  now  make  a  differ- 
ent choice  and  traverse  Oxford  Street.  You,  as  pas- 
sive spectators,  look  on  and  see  the  two  alternative 
universes,  —  one  of  them  with  me  walking  through 
Divinity  Avenue  in  it,  the  other  with  the  same  me 
walking  through  Oxford  Street.  Now,  if  you  are  de- 
terminists  you  believe  one  of  these  universes  to  have 
been  from  eternity  impossible :  you  believe  it  to  have 


156          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

been  impossible  because  of  the  intrinsic  irrationality 
or  accidentality  somewhere  involved  in  it.  But  look- 
ing outwardly  at  these  universes,  can  you  say  which 
is  the  impossible  and  accidental  one,  and  which  the 
rational  and  necessary  one  ?  I  doubt  if  the  most  iron- 
clad determinist  among  you  could  have  the  slightest 
glimmer  of  light  on  this  point.  In  other  words,  either 
universe  after  the  fact  and  once  there  would,  to  our 
means  of  observation  and  understanding,  appear  just 
as  rational  as  the  other.  There  would  be  absolutely 
no  criterion  by  which  we  might  judge  one  necessary 
and  the  other  matter  of  chance.  Suppose  now  we 
relieve  the  gods  of  their  hypothetical  task  and  as- 
sume my  choice,  once  made,  to  be  made  forever.  I 
go  through  Divinity  Avenue  for  good  and  all.  If,  as 
good  determinists,  you  now  begin  to  affirm,  what  all 
good  determinists  punctually  do  affirm,  that  in  the 
nature  of  things  I  could V/have  gone  through  Oxford 
Street,  —  had  I  done  so  it  would  have  been  chance, 
irrationality,  insanity,  a  horrid  gap  in  nature,  —  I 
simply  call  your  attention  to  this,  that  your  affirma- 
tion is  what  the  Germans  call  a  Machtsprnch,  a  mere 
conception  fulminated  as  a  dogma  and  based  on  no 
insight  into  details.  Before  my  choice,  either  street 
seemed  as  natural  to  you  as  to  me.  Had  I  happened 
to  take  Oxford  Street,  Divinity  Avenue  would  have 
figured  in  your  philosophy  as  the  gap  in  nature; 
and  you  would  have  so  proclaimed  it  with  the  best 
deterministic  conscience  in  the  world. 

But  what  a  hollow  outcry,  then,  is  this  against  a 
chance  which,  if  it  were  present  to  us,  we  could  by 
no  character  whatever  distinguish  from  a  rational  ne- 
cessity !  I  have  taken  the  most  trivial  of  examples, 
but  no  possible  example  could  lead  to  any  different 


The  Dilemma  of  Determinism.          157 

result.  For  what  are  the  alternatives  which,  in  point 
of  fact,  offer  themselves  to  human  volition?  What 
are  those  futures  that  now  seem  matters  of  chance? 
Are  they  not  one  and  all  like  the  Divinity  Avenue 
and  Oxford  Street  of  our  example?  Are  they  not 
all  of  them  kinds  of  things  already  here  and  based 
in  the  existing  frame  of  nature?  Is  any  one  ever 
tempted  to  produce  an  absolute  accident,  something 
utterly  irrelevant  to  the  rest  of  the  world  ?  Do  not 
all  the  motives  that  assail  us,  all  the  futures  that  offer 
themselves  to  our  choice,  spring  equally  from  the  soil 
of  the  past ;  and  would  not  either  one  of  them,  whether 
realized  through  chance  or  through  necessity,  the 
moment  it  was  realized,  seem  to  us  to  fit  that  past, 
and  in  the  completest  and  most  continuous  manner 
to  interdigitate  with  the  phenomena  already  there?  1 

The  more  one  thinks  of  the  matter,  the  more  one 
wonders  that  so  empty  and  gratuitous  a  hubbub  as 
this  outcry  against  chance  should  have  found  so  great 
an  echo  in  the  hearts  of  men.  It  is  a  word  which 
tells  us  absolutely  nothing  about  what  chances,  or 
about  the  modus  operandi  of  the  chancing;  and  the 
use  of  it  as  a  war-cry  shows  only  a  temper  of  intel- 

1  A  favorite  argument  against  free-will  is  that  if  it  be  true,  a  man's 
murderer  may  as  probably  be  his  best  friend  as  his  worst  enemy,  a 
mother  be  as  likely  to  strangle  as  to  suckle  her  first-born,  and  all  of  us 
be  as  ready  to  jump  from  fourth-story  windows  as  to  go  out  of  front 
doors,  etc.  Users  of  this  argument  should  properly  be  excluded  from 
debate  till  they  learn  what  the  real  question  is.  '  Free-will '  does  not 
say  that  everything  that  is  physically  conceivable  is  also  morally 
possible.  It  merely  says  that  of  alternatives  that  really  tempt  our 
will  more  than  one  is  really,  possible.  Of  course,  the  alternatives  that 
do  thus  tempt  our  will  are  vastly  fewer  than  the  physical  possibilities 
we  can  coldly  fancy.  Persons  really  tempted  often  do  murder  their 
best  friends,  mothers  do  strangle  their  first-born,  people  do  jump  out 
of  fourth-story  windows,  etc. 


158  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

/actual  absolutism,  a  demand  that  the  world  shall  be 
a  solid  block,  subject  to  one  control, — which  temper, 
which  demand,  the  world  may  not  be  bound  to  gratify 
at  all.  In  every  outwardly  verifiable  and  practical 
respect,  a  world  in  which  the  alternatives  that  now 
actually  distract  your  choice  were  decided  by  pure 
chance  would  be  by  me  absolutely  undistinguished 
from  the  world  in  which  I  now  live.  I  am,  therefore, 
entirely  willing  to  call  it,  so  far  as  your  choices  go, 
a  world  of  chance  for  me.  To  yourselves,  it  is  true, 
those  very  acts  of  choice,  which  to  me  are  so  blind, 
opaque,  and  external,  are  the  opposites  of  this,  for 
you  are  within  them  and  effect  them.  To  you  they 
appear  as  decisions ;  and  decisions,  for  him  who 
makes  them,  are  altogether  peculiar  psychic  facts. 
Self-luminous  and  self-justifying  at  the  living  mo- 
ment at  which  they  occur,  they  appeal  to  no  outside 
moment  to  put  its  stamp  upon  them  or  make  them 
continuous  with  the  rest  of  nature.  Themselves  it 
is  rather  who  seem  to  make  nature  continuous ;  and 
in  their  strange  and  intense  function  of  granting  con- 
sent to  one  possibility  and  withholding  it  from  another, 
to  transform  an  equivocal  and  double  future  into  an 
inalterable  and  simple  past. 

But  with  the  psychology  of  the  matter  we  have  no 
concern  this  evening.  The  quarrel  which  determinism 
has  with  chance  fortunately  has  nothing  to  do  with 
this  or  that  psychological  detail.  It  is  a  quarrel 
altogether  metaphysical.  Determinism  denies  the 
ambiguity  of  future  volitions,  because  it  affirms  that 
nothing  future  can  be  ambiguous.  But  we  have  said 
enough  to  meet  the  issue.  Indeterminate  future  voli- 
tions do  mean  chance.  Let  us  not  fear  to  shout  it 
from  the  house-tops  if  need  be ;  for  we  now  know  that 


The  Dilemma  of  Determinism.          159 

the  idea  of  chance  is,  at  bottom,  exactly  the  same  thing 
as  the  idea  of  gift,  —  the  one  simply  being  a  dispar- 
aging, and  the  other  a  eulogistic,  name  for  anything 
on  which  we  have  no  effective  claim.  And  whether 
the  world  be  the  better  or  the  worse  for  having  either 
chances  or  gifts  in  it  will  depend  altogether  on  what 
these  uncertain  and  unclaimable  things  turn  out  to  be. 

And  this  at  last  brings  us  within  sight  of  our  sub- 
ject. We  have  seen  what  determinism  means :  we 
have  seen  that  indeterminism  is  rightly  described  as 
meaning  chance ;  and  we  have  seen  that  chance, 
the  very  name  of  which  we  are  urged  to  shrink  from 
as  from  a  metaphysical  pestilence,  means  only  the 
negative  fact  that  no  part  of  the  world,  however  big, 
can  claim  to  control  absolutely  the  destinies  of  the 
whole.  But  although,  in  discussing  the  word  '  chance/ 
I  may  at  moments  have  seemed  to  be  arguing  for  its 
real  existence,  I  have  not  meant  to  do  so  yet.  We 
have  not  yet  ascertained  whether  this  be  a  world  of 
chance  or  no ;  at  most,  we  have  agreed  that  it  seems 
so.  And  I  now  repeat  what  I  said  at  the  outset,  that, 
from  any  strict  theoretical  point  of  view,  the  question 
is  insoluble.  To  deepen  our  theoretic  sense  of  the 
difference  between  a  world  with  chances  in  it  and  a 
deterministic  world  is  the  most  I  can  hope  to  do ;  and 
this  I  may  now  at  last  begin  upon,  after  all  our  tedi- 
ous clearing  of  the  way. 

I  wish  first  of  all  to  show  you  just  what  the  notion 
that  this  is  a  deterministic  world  implies.  The  impli- 
cations I  call  your  attention  to  are  all  bound  up  with 
the  fact  that  it  is  a  world  in  which  we  constantly 
have  to  make  what  I  shall,  with  your  permission,  call 
judgments  of  regret.  Hardly  an  hour  passes  in 


i6o         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

which  we  do  not  wish  that  something  might  be  other- 
wise ;  and  happy  indeed  are  those  of  us  whose  hearts 
have  never  echoed  the  wish  of  Omar  Khayam  — 

41  That  we  might  clasp,  ere  closed,  the  book  of  fate, 

And  make  the  writer  on  a  fairer  leaf 
Inscribe  our  names,  or  quite  obliterate. 

"  Ah !  Love,  could  you  and  I  with  fate  conspire 
To  mend  this  sorry  scheme  of  things  entire, 
Would  we  not  shatter  it  to  bits,  and  then 
Remould  it  nearer  to  the  heart's  desire  ?  " 

Now,  it  is  undeniable  that  most  of  these  regrets  are 
foolish,  and  quite  on  a  par  in  point  of  philosophic 
value  with  the  criticisms  on  the  universe  of  that  friend 
of  our  infancy,  the  hero  of  the  fable  The  Atheist  and 
the  Acorn,  — 

"  Fool !  had  that  bough  a  pumpkin  bore, 
Thy  whimsies  would  have  worked  no  more,"  etc. 

Even  from  the  point  of  view  of  our  own  ends,  we 
should  probably  make  a  botch  of  remodelling  the 
universe.  How  much  more  then  from  the  point  of 
view  of  ends  we  cannot  see !  Wise  men  therefore 
regret  as  little  as  they  can.  But  still  some  regrets 
are  pretty  obstinate  and  hard  to  stifle,  —  regrets 
for  acts  of  wanton  cruelty  or  treachery,  for  exam- 
ple, whether  performed  by  others  or  by  ourselves. 
Hardly  any  one  can  remain  entirely  optimistic  after 
reading  the  confession  of  the  murderer  at  Brockton 
the  other  day:  how,  to  get  rid  of  the  wife  whose 
continued  existence  bored  him,  he  inveigled  her  into 
a  desert  spot,  shot  her  four  times,  and  then,  as  she 
lay  on  the  ground  and  said  to  him,  "  You  did  n't  do 
it  on  purpose,  did  you,  dear?"  replied,  "No,  I 


The  Dilemma  of  Determinism.          161 

did  n't  do  it  on  purpose,"  as  he  raised  a  rock  and 
smashed  her  skull.  Such  an  occurrence,  with  the 
mild  sentence  and  self-satisfaction  of  the  prisoner, 
is  a  field  for  a  crop  of  regrets,  which  one  need  not 
take  up  in  detail.  We  feel  that,  although  a  perfect 
mechanical  fit  to  the  rest  of  the  universe,  it  is  a  bad 
moral  fit,  and  that  something  else  would  really  have 
been  better  in  its  place. 

But  for  the  deterministic  philosophy  the  murder, 
the  sentence,  and  the  prisoner's  optimism  were  all 
necessary  from  eternity;  and  nothing  else  for  a 
moment  had  a  ghost  of  a  chance  of  being  put  into 
their  place.  To  admit  such  a  chance,  the  deter- 
minists  tell  us,  would  be  to  make  a  suicide  of  reason ; 
so  we  must  steel  our  hearts  against  the  thought. 
And  here  our  plot  thickens,  for  we  see  the  first  of 
those  difficult  implications  of  determinism  and  mon- 
ism which  it  is  my  purpose  to  make  you  feel.  If  this 
Brockton  murder  was  called  for  by  the  rest  of  the 
universe,  if  it  had  to  come  at  its  preappointed  hour, 
and  if  nothing  else  would  have  been  consistent  with 
the  sense  of  the  whole,  what  are  we  to  think  of  the 
universe?  Are  we  stubbornly  to  stick  to  our  judg- 
ment of  regret,  and  say,  though  it  couldn't  be,  yet 
it  would  have  been  a  better  universe  with  something 
different  from  this  Brockton  murder  in  it?  That,  of 
course,  seems  the  natural  and  spontaneous  thing  for 
us  to  do ;  and  yet  it  is  nothing  short  of  deliberately 
espousing  a  kind  of  pessimism.  The  judgment  of 
regret  calls  the  murder  bad.  Calling  a  thing  bad 
means,  if  it  mean  anything  at  all,  that  the  thing 
ought  not  to  be,  that  something  else  ought  to  be  in 
its  stead.  Determinism,  in  denying  that  anything 
else  can  be  in  its  stead,  virtually  defines  the  universe 

ii 


1 62          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

as  a  place  in  which  what  ought  to  be  is  impossible, — 
in  other  words,  as  an  organism  whose  constitution 
is  afflicted  with  an  incurable  taint,  an  irremediable 
flaw.  The  pessimism  of  a  Schopenhauer  says  no 
more  than  this,  —  that  the  murder  is  a  symptom ; 
and  that  it  is  a  vicious  symptom  because  it  belongs 
to  a  vicious  whole,  which  can  express  its  nature  no 
otherwise  than  by  bringing  forth  just  such  a  symp- 
tom as  that  at  this  particular  spot.  Regret  for  the 
murder  must  transform  itself,  if  we  are  determinists 
and  wise,  into  a  larger  regret.  It  is  absurd  to  regret 
the  murder  alone.  Other  things  being  what  they  are, 
it  could  not  be  different.  What  we  should  regret  is 
that  whole  frame  of  things  of  which  the  murder  is  one 
member.  I  see  no  escape  whatever  from  this  pessi- 
mistic conclusion,  if,  being  determinists,  our  judgment 
of  regret  is  to  be  allowed  to  stand  at  all. 

The  only  deterministic  escape  from  pessimism  is 
everywhere  to  abandon  the  judgment  of  regret.  That 
this  can  be  done,  history  shows  to  be  not  impossible. 
The  devil,  quoad  existentiam,  may  be  good.  That  is, 
although  he  be  a  principle  of  evil,  yet  the  universe, 
with  such  a  principle  in  it,  may  practically  be  a 
better  universe  than  it  could  have  been  without.  On 
every  hand,  in  a  small  way,  we  find  that  a  certain 
amount  of  evil  is  a  condition  by  which  a  higher  form 
of  good  is  bought.  There  is  nothing  to  prevent 
anybody  from  generalizing  this  view,  and  trusting 
that  if  we  could  but  see  things  in  the  largest  of  all 
ways,  even  such  matters  as  this  Brockton  murder 
would  appear  to  be  paid  for  by  the  uses  that  follow 
in  their  train.  An  optimism  quand  meme,  a  syste- 
matic and  infatuated  optimism  like  that  ridiculed 
by  Voltaire  in  his  Candide,  is  one  of  the  possible 


The  Dilemma  of  Determinism.          163 

ideal  ways  in  which  a  man  may  train  himself  to  look 
on  life.  Bereft  of  dogmatic  hardness  and  lit  up  with 
the  expression  of  a  tender  and  pathetic  hope,  such 
an  optimism  has  been  the  grace  of  some  of  the  most 
religious  characters  that  ever  lived. 

"  Throb  thine  with  Nature's  throbbing  breast, 
And  all  is  clear  from  east  to  west." 

Even  cruelty  and  treachery  may  be  among  the 
absolutely  blessed  fruits  of  time,  and  to  quarrel  with 
any  of  their  details  may  be  blasphemy.  The  only 
real  blasphemy,  in  short,  may  be  that  pessimistic 
temper  of  the  soul  which  lets  it  give  way  to  such 
things  as  regrets,  remorse,  and  grief. 

Thus,  our  deterministic  pessimism  may  become  a 
deterministic  optimism  at  the  price  of  extinguishing 
our  judgments  of  regret. 

But  does  not  this  immediately  bring  us  into  a 
curious  logical  predicament?  Our  determinism  leads 
us  to  call  our  judgments  of  regret  wrong,  because 
they  are  pessimistic  in  implying  that  what  is  impossi- 
ble yet  ought  to  be.  But  how  then  about  the  judg- 
ments of  regret  themselves?  If  they  are  wrong,  other 
judgments,  judgments  of  approval  presumably,  ought 
to  be  in  their  place.  But  as  they  are  necessitated, 
nothing  else  can  be  in  their  place ;  and  the  universe 
is  just  what  it  was  before,  —  namely,  a  place  in  which 
what  ought  to  be  appears  impossible.  We  have  got 
one  foot  out  of  the  pessimistic  bog,  but  the  other  one 
sinks  all  the  deeper.  We  have  rescued  our  actions 
from  the  bonds  of  evil,  but  our  judgments  are  now 
held  fast.  When  murders  and  treacheries  cease  to  be 
sins,  regrets  are  theoretic  absurdities  and  errors.  The 
theoretic  and  the  active  life  thus  play  a  kind  of  see- 


164          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

saw  with  each  other  on  the  ground  of  evil.  The  rise 
of  either  sends  the  other  down.  Murder  and  treach- 
ery cannot  be  good  without  regret  being  bad  :  regret 
cannot  be  good  without  treachery  and  murder  being 
bad.  Both,  however,  are  supposed  to  have  been 
foredoomed ;  so  something  must  be  fatally  unreason- 
able, absurd,  and  wrong  in  the  world.  It  must  be  a 
place  of  which  either  sin  or  error  forms  a  necessary 
part.  From  this  dilemma  there  seems  at  first  sight 
no  escape.  Are  we  then  so  soon  to  fall  back  into  the 
pessimism  from  which  we  thought  we  had  emerged? 
And  is  there  no  possible  way  by  which  we  may,  with 
good  intellectual  consciences,  call  the  cruelties  and 
the  treacheries,  the  reluctances  and  the  regrets,  all 
good  together? 

Certainly  there  is  such  a  way,  and  you  are  probably 
most  of  you  ready  to  formulate  it  yourselves.  But, 
before  doing  so,  remark  how  inevitably  the  question 
of  determinism  and  indeterminism  slides  us  into  the 
question  of  optimism  and  pessimism,  or,  as  our  fathers 
called  it,  '  the  question  of  evil.'  The  theological  form 
of  all  these  disputes  is  the  simplest  and  the  deepest, 
the  form  from  which  there  is  the  least  escape,  —  not 
because,  as  some  have  sarcastically  said,  remorse  and 
regret  are  clung  to  with  a  morbid  fondness  by  the 
theologians  as  spiritual  luxuries,  but  because  they  are 
existing  facts  of  the  world,  and  as  such  must  be  taken 
into  account  in  the  deterministic  interpretation  of  all 
that  is  fated  to  be.  If  they  are  fated  to  be  error,  does 
not  the  bat's  wing  of  irrationality  still  cast  its  shadow 
over  the  world  ? 

The  refuge  from  the  quandary  lies,  as  I  said,  not 
far  off.  The  necessary  acts  we  erroneously  regret 


The  Dilemma  of  Determinism.          165 

may  be  good,  and  yet  our  error  in  so  regretting  them 
may  be  also  good,  on  one  simple  condition ;  and  that 
condition  is  this :  The  world  must  not  be  regarded  as 
a  machine  whose  final  purpose  is  the  making  real  of 
any  outward  good,  but  rather  as  a  contrivance  for 
deepening  the  theoretic  consciousness  of  what  good- 
ness and  evil  in  their  intrinsic  natures  are.  Not  the 
doing  either  of  good  or  of  evil  is  what  nature  cares 
for,  but  the  knowing  of  them.  Life  is  one  long  eating 
of  the  fruit  of  the  tree  of  knowledge.  I  am  in  the 
habit,  in  thinking  to  myself,  of  calling  this  point  of 
view  the  gnostical  point  of  view.  According  to  it,  the 
world  is  neither  an  optimism  nor  a  pessimism,  but  a 
gnosticism.  But  as  this  term  may  perhaps  lead  to 
some  misunderstandings,  I  will  use  it  as  little  as  pos- 
sible here,  and  speak  rather  of  subjectivism,  and  the 
subjectivistic  point  of  view. 

Subjectivism  has  three  great  branches,  —  we  may 
call  them  scientificism,  sentimentalism,  and  sensual- 
ism, respectively.  They  all  agree  essentially  about 
the  universe,  in  deeming  that  what  happens  there  is 
subsidiary  to  what  we  think  or  feel  about  it.  Crime 
justifies  its  criminality  by  awakening  our  intelligence 
of  that  criminality,  and  eventually  our  remorses  and 
regrets;  and  the  error  included  in  remorses  and  re- 
grets, the  error  of  supposing  that  the  past  could  have 
been  different,  justifies  itself  by  its  use.  Its  use  is  to 
quicken  our  sense  of  what  the  irretrievably  lost  is. 
When  we  think  of  it  as  that  which  might  have  been 
('the  saddest  words  of  tongue  or  pen'),  the  quality 
of  its  worth  speaks  to  us  with  a  wilder  sweetness ;  and, 
conversely,  the  dissatisfaction  wherewith  we  think  of 
what  seems  to  have  driven  it  from  its  natural  place 
gives  us  the  severer  pang.  Admirable  artifice  of 


1 66          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

nature  !  we  might  be  tempted  to  exclaim,  —  deceiv- 
ing us  in  order  the  better  to  enlighten  us,  and  leaving 
nothing  undone  to  accentuate  to  our  consciousness 
the  yawning  distance  of  those  opposite  poles  of  good 
and  evil  between  which  creation  swings. 

We  have  thus  clearly  revealed  to  our  view  what 
may  be  called  the  dilemma  of  determinism,  so  far  as 
determinism  pretends  to  think  things  out  at  all.  A 
merely  mechanical  determinism,  it  is  true,  rather 
rejoices  in  not  thinking  them  out  It  is  very  sure 
that  the  universe  must  satisfy  its  postulate  of  a  phy- 
sical continuity  and  coherence,  but  it  smiles  at  any 
one  who  comes  forward  with  a  postulate  of  moral  co- 
herence as  well.  I  may  suppose,  however,  that  the 
number  of  purely  mechanical  or  hard  determinists 
among  you  this  evening  is  small.  The  determinism 
to  whose  seductions  you  are  most  exposed  is  what 
I  have  called  soft  determinism,  —  the  determinism 
which  allows  considerations  of  good  and  bad  to 
mingle  with  those  of  cause  and  effect  in  deciding 
what  sort  of  a  universe  this  may  rationally  be  held 
to  be.  The  dilemma  of  this  determinism  is  one 
whose  left  horn  is  pessimism  and  whose  right  horn  is 
subjectivism.  In  other  words,  if  determinism  is  to 
escape  pessimism,  it  must  leave  off  looking  at  the 
goods  and  ills  of  life  in  a  simple  objective  way,  and 
regard  them  as  materials,  indifferent  in  themselves, 
for  the  production  of  consciousness,  scientific  and 
ethical,  in  us. 

To  escape  pessimism  is,  as  we  all  know,  no  easy 
task.  Your  own  studies  have  sufficiently  shown  you 
the  almost  desperate  difficulty  of  making  the  notion 
that  there  is  a  single  principle  of  things,  and  that 
principle  absolute  perfection,  rhyme  together  with 


The  Dilemma  of  Determinism.          167 

our  daily  vision  of  the  facts  of  life.  If  perfection  be 
the  principle,  how  comes  there  any  imperfection 
here?  If  God  be  good,  how  came  he  to  create — • 
or,  if  he  did  not  create,  how  comes  he  to  permit  —  the 
devil?  The  evil  facts  must  be  explained  as  seeming: 
the  devil  must  be  whitewashed,  the  universe  must  be 
disinfected,  if  neither  God's  goodness  nor  his  unity 
and  power  are  to  remain  impugned.  And  of  all 
the  various  ways  of  operating  the  disinfection,  and 
making  bad  seem  less  bad,  the  way  of  subjectivism 
appears  by  far  the  best.1 

For,  after  all,  is  there  not  something  rather  absurd 
in  our  ordinary  notion  of  external  things  being  good 
or  bad  in  themselves?  Can  murders  and  treacheries, 
considered  as  mere  outward  happenings,  or  motions 
of  matter,  be  bad  without  any  one  to  feel  their  bad- 
ness? And  could  paradise  properly  be  good  in  the 
absence  of  a  sentient  principle  by  which  the  goodness 
was  perceived  ?  Outward  goods  and  evils  seem  prac- 
tically indistinguishable  except  in  so  far  as  they 
result  in  getting  moral  judgments  made  about  them. 
But  then  the  moral  judgments  seem  the  main  thing, 
and  the  outward  facts  mere  perishing  instruments  for 
their  production.  This  is  subjectivism.  Every  one 
must  at  some  time  have  wondered  at  that  strange 
paradox  of  our  moral  nature,  that,  though  the  pur- 

1  To  a  reader  who  says  he  is  satisfied  with  a  pessimism,  and  has 
no  objection  to  thinking  the  whole  bad,  I  have  no  more  to  say:  he 
makes  fewer  demands  on  the  world  than  I,  who,  making  them,  wish 
to  look  a  little  further  before  I  give  up  all  hope  of  having  them  sat- 
isfied. If,  however,  all  he  means  is  that  the  badness  of  some  parts 
does  not  prevent  his  acceptance  of  a  universe  whose  other  parts  give 
him  satisfaction,  I  welcome  him  as  an  ally.  He  has  abandoned  the 
notion  of  the  Whole,  which  is  the  essence  of  deterministic  monism, 
and  views  things  as  a  pluralism,  just  as  I  do  in  this  paper. 


1 68          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

suit  of  outward  good  is  the  breath  of  its  nostrils,  the 
attainment  of  outward  good  would  seem  to  be  its 
suffocation  and  death.  Why  does  the  painting  of  any 
paradise  or  Utopia,  in  heaven  or  on  earth,  awaken 
such  yawnings  for  nirvana  and  escape?  The  white- 
robed  harp-playing  heaven  of  our  sabbath-schools, 
and  the  ladylike  tea-table  elysium  represented  in 
Mr.  Spencer's  Data  of  Ethics,  as  the  final  consumma- 
tion of  progress,  are  exactly  on  a  par  in  this  respect, 
—  lubberlands,  pure  and  simple,  one  and  all.1  We 
look  upon  them  from  this  delicious  mess  of  insanities 
and  realities,  strivings  and  deadnesses,  hopes  and 
fears,  agonies  and  exultations,  which  forms  our  pres- 
ent state,  and  tedium  vitcz  is  the  only  sentiment  they 
awaken  in  our  breasts.  To  our  crepuscular  natures, 
born  for  the  conflict,  the  Rembrandtesque  moral 
chiaroscuro,  the  shifting  struggle  of  the  sunbeam  in 
the  gloom,  such  pictures  of  light  upon  light  are 
vacuous  and  expressionless,  and  neither  to  be  en- 
joyed nor  understood.  If  this  be  the  whole  fruit  ot 
the  victory,  we  say;  if  the  generations  of  mankind 
suffered  and  laid  down  their  lives ;  if  prophets  con- 
fessed and  martyrs  sang  in  the  fire,  and  all  the  sacred 
tears  were  shed  for  no  other  end  than  that  a  race  of 
creatures  of  such  unexampled  insipidity  should  suc- 
ceed, and  protract  in  saecula  saeculorum  their  con- 
tented and  inoffensive  lives,  —  why,  at  such  a  rate, 
better  lose  than  win  the  battle,  or  at  all  events  better 
ring  down  the  curtain  before  the  last  act  of  the  play, 
so  that  a  business  that  began  so  importantly  may  be 
saved  from  so  singularly  flat  a  winding-up. 

1  Compare  Sir  James  Stephen's  Essays  by  a  Banister,  London, 
1862,  pp.  138,  318. 


The  Dilemma  of  Determinism.          169 

All  this  is  what  I  should  instantly  say,  were  I  called 
on  to  plead  for  gnosticism ;  and  its  real  friends,  of 
whom  you  will  presently  perceive  I  am  not  one,  would 
say  without  difficulty  a  great  deal  more.  Regarded 
as  a  stable  finality,  every  outward  good  becomes  a 
mere  weariness  to  the  flesh.  It  must  be  menaced,  be 
occasionally  lost,  for  its  goodness  to  be  fully  felt  as 
such.  Nay,  more  than  occasionally  lost.  No  one 
knows  the  worth  of  innocence  till  he  knows  it  is  gone 
forever,  and  that  money  cannot  buy  it  back.  Not  the 
saint,  but  the  sinner  that  repenteth,  is  he  to  whom 
the  full  length  and  breadth,  and  height  and  depth,  of 
life's  meaning  is  revealed.  Not  the  absence  of  vice, 
but  vice  there,  and  virtue  holding  her  by  the  throat, 
seems  the  ideal  human  state.  And  there  seems  no 
reason  to  suppose  it  not  a  permanent  human  state. 
There  is  a  deep  truth  in  what  the  school  of  Schopen- 
hauer insists  on,  —  the  illusoriness  of  the  notion  of 
moral  progress.  The  more  brutal  forms  of  evil  that  go 
are  replaced  by  others  more  subtle  and  more  poison- 
ous. Our  moral  horizon  moves  with  us  as  we  move, 
and  never  do  we  draw  nearer  to  the  far-off  line  where 
the  black  waves  and  the  azure  meet.  The  final  pur- 
pose of  our  creation  seems  most  plausibly  to  be  the 
greatest  possible  enrichment  of  our  ethical  conscious- 
ness, through  the  intensest  play  of  contrasts  and  the 
widest  diversity  of  characters.  This  of  course  obliges 
some  of  us  to  be  vessels  of  wrath,  while  it  calls  others 
to  be  vessels  of  honor.  But  the  subjectivist  point  of 
view  reduces  all  these  outward  distinctions  to  a  com- 
mon denominator.  The  wretch  languishing  in  the 
felon's  cell  may  be  drinking  draughts  of  the  wine  of 
truth  that  will  never  pass  the  lips  of  the  so-called  fa- 
vorite of  fortune.  And  the  peculiar  consciousness  ot 


170          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

each  of  them  is  an  indispensable  note  in  the  great 
ethical  concert  which  the  centuries  as  they  roll  are 
grinding  out  of  the  living  heart  of  man. 

So  much  for  subjectivism  !  If  the  dilemma  of  de- 
terminism be  to  choose  between  it  and  pessimism,  I 
see  little  room  for  hesitation  from  the  strictly  theo- 
retical point  of  view.  Subjectivism  seems  the  more 
rational  scheme.  And  the  world  may,  possibly,  for 
aught  I  know,  be  nothing  else.  When  the  healthy 
love  of  life  is  on  one,  and  all  its  forms  and  its  appe- 
tites seem  so  unutterably  real ;  when  the  most  brutal 
and  the  most  spiritual  things  are  lit  by  the  same  sun, 
and  each  is  an  integral  part  of  the  total  richness,  — 
why,  then  it  seems  a  grudging  and  sickly  way  of  meet- 
ing so  robust  a  universe  to  shrink  from  any  of  its  facts 
and  wish  them  not  to  be.  Rather  take  the  strictly 
dramatic  point  of  view,  and  treat  the  whole  thing  as  a 
great  unending  romance  which  the  spirit  of  the  uni- 
verse, striving  to  realize  its  own  content,  is  eternally 
thinking  out  and  representing  to  itself.1 

No  one,  I  hope,  will  accuse  me,  after  I  have  said 
all  this,  of  underrating  the  reasons  in  favor  of  subjec- 
tivism. And  now  that  I  proceed  to  say  why  those 
reasons,  strong  as  they  are,  fail  to  convince  my  own 
mind,  I  trust  the  presumption  may  be  that  my  objec- 
tions are  stronger  still. 

I  frankly  confess  that  they  are  of  a  practical  order. 
If  we  practically  take  up  subjectivism  in  a  sincere  and 
radical  manner  and  follow  its  consequences,  we  meet 
with  some  that  make  us  pause.  Let  a  subjectivism 

1  Get  univers  est  un  spectacle  que  Dieu  se  donne  k  lui-meme. 
Servons  les  intentions  du  grand  chorege  en  contribuant  a  rendre  la 
spectacle  aussi  brillant,  aussi  varie  que  possible.  —  RENAN. 


The  Dilemma  of  Determinism.         171 

begin  in  never  so  severe  and  intellectual  a  way,  it  is 
forced  by  the  law  of  its  nature  to  develop  another 
side  of  itself  and  end  with  the  corruptest  curiosity. 
Once  dismiss  the  notion  that  certain  duties  are  good 
in  themselves,  and  that  we  are  here  to  do  them,  no 
matter  how  we  feel  about  them  ;  once  consecrate  the 
opposite  notion  that  our  performances  and  our  vio- 
lations of  duty  are  for  a  common  purpose,  the  at- 
tainment of  subjective  knowledge  and  feeling,  and 
that  the  deepening  of  these  is  the  chief  end  of  our 
lives,  —  and  at  what  point  on  the  downward  slope  are 
we  to  stop?  In  theology,  subjectivism  develops  as 
its  '  left  wing '  antinomianism.  In  literature,  its  left 
wing  is  romanticism.  And  in  practical  life  it  is  ei- 
ther a  nerveless  sentimentality  or  a  sensualism  with- 
out bounds. 

Everywhere  it  fosters  the  fatalistic  mood  of  mind. 
It  makes  those  who  are  already  too  inert  more  passive 
still ;  it  renders  wholly  reckless  those  whose  energy  is 
already  in  excess.  All  through  history  we  find  how 
subjectivism,  as  soon  as  it  has  a  free  career,  exhausts 
itself  in  every  sort  of  spiritual,  moral,  and  practical 
license.  Its  optimism  turns  to  an  ethical  indiffer- 
ence, which  infallibly  brings  dissolution  in  its  train. 
It  is  perfectly  safe  to  say  now  that  if  the  Hegelian 
gnosticism,  which  has  begun  to  show  itself  here  and 
in  Great  Britain,  were  to  become  a  popular  philosophy, 
as  it  once  was  in  Germany,  it  would  certainly  develop 
its  left  wing  here  as  there,  and  produce  a  reaction  of 
disgust.  Already  I  have  heard  a  graduate  of  this 
very  school  express  in  the  pulpit  his  willingness  to  sin 
like  David,  if  only  he  might  repent  like  David.  You 
may  tell  me  he  was  only  sowing  his  wild,  or  rather 
his  tame,  oats ;  and  perhaps  he  was.  But  the  point  is 


1 72          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

that  in  the  subjectivistic  or  gnostical  philosophy  oat- 
sowing,  wild  or  tame,  becomes  a  systematic  necessity 
and  the  chief  function  of  life.  After  the  pure  and 
classic  truths,  the  exciting  and  rancid  ones  must  be 
experienced  ;  and  if  the  stupid  virtues  of  the  philistine 
herd  do  not  then  come  in  and  save  society  from  the 
influence  of  the  children  of  light,  a  sort  of  inward 
putrefaction  becomes  its  inevitable  doom. 

Look  at  the  last  runnings  of  the  romantic  school,  as 
we  see  them  in  that  strange  contemporary  Parisian 
literature,  with  which  we  of  the  less  clever  countries 
are  so  often  driven  to  rinse  out  our  minds  after  they 
have  become  clogged  with  the  dulness  and  heaviness 
of  our  native  pursuits.  The  romantic  school  began 
with  the  worship  of  subjective  sensibility  and  the  re- 
volt against  legality  of  which  Rousseau  was  the  first 
great  prophet:  and  through  various  fluxes  and  re- 
fluxes, right  wings  and  left  wings,  it  stands  to-day 
with  two  men  of  genius,  M.  Renan  and  M.  Zola,  as  its 
principal  exponents,  —  one  speaking  with  its  mascu- 
line, and  the  other  with  what  might  be  called  its  fem- 
inine, voice.  I  prefer  not  to  think  now  of  less  noble 
members  of  the  school,  and  the  Renan  I  have  in  mind 
is  of  course  the  Renan  of  latest  dates.  As  I  have 
used  the  term  gnostic,  both  he  and  Zola  are  gnostics 
of  the  most  pronounced  sort.  Both  are  athirst  for 
the  facts  of  life,  and  both  think  the  facts  of  human 
sensibility  to  be  of  all  facts  the  most  worthy  of  atten- 
tion. Both  agree,  moreover,  that  sensibility  seems  to 
be  there  for  no  higher  purpose,  —  certainly  not,  as 
the  Philistines  say,  for  the  sake  of  bringing  mere  out- 
ward rights  to  pass  and  frustrating  outward  wrongs. 
One  dwells  on  the  sensibilities  for  their  energy,  the 
other  for  their  sweetness ;  one  speaks  with  a  voice  of 


The  Dilemma  of  Determinism.          173 

bronze,  the  other  with  that  of  an  .^olian  harp ;  one 
ruggedly  ignores  the  distinction  of  good  and  evil,  the 
other  plays  the  coquette  between  the  craven  unman- 
liness  of  his  Philosophic  Dialogues  and  the  butterfly 
optimism  of  his  Souvenirs  de  Jeunesse.  But  under  the 
pages  of  both  there  sounds  incessantly  the  hoarse  bass 
of  vanitas  vanitatum,  omnia  vanitas,  which  the  reader 
may  hear,  whenever  he  will,  between  the  lines.  No 
writer  of  this  French  romantic  school  has  a  word  of 
rescue  from  the  hour  of  satiety  with  the  things  of  life, 
—  the  hour  in  which  we  say,  "  I  take  no  pleasure  in 
them,"  —  or  from  the  hour  of  terror  at  the  world's 
vast  meaningless  grinding,  if  perchance  such  hours 
should  come.  For  terror  and  satiety  are  facts  of  sen- 
sibility like  any  others ;  and  at  their  own  hour  they 
reign  in  their  own  right.  The  heart  of  the  romantic 
utterances,  whether  poetical,  critical,  or  historical,  is 
this  inward  remedilessness,  what  Carlyle  calls  this  far- 
off  whimpering  of  wail  and  woe.  And  from  this  ro- 
mantic state  of  mind  there  is  absolutely  no  possible 
theoretic  escape.  Whether,  like  Renan,  we  look  upon 
life  in  a  more  refined  way,  as  a  romance  of  the  spirit ; 
or  whether,  like  the  friends  of  M.  Zola,  we  pique  our- 
selves on  our  '  scientific  '  and  '  analytic  '  character,  and 
prefer  to  be  cynical,  and  call  the  world  a  '  roman  ex- 
perimental'  on  an  infinite  scale,  —  in  either  case  the 
world  appears  to  us  potentially  as  what  the  same  Car- 
lyle once  called  it,  a  vast,  gloomy,  solitary  Golgotha 
and  mill  of  death. 

The  only  escape  is  by  the  practical  way.  And 
since  I  have  mentioned  the  nowadays  much-reviled 
name  of  Carlyle,  let  me  mention  it  once  more,  and 
say  it  is  the  way  of  his  teaching.  No  matter  for 
Carlyle's  life,  no  matter  for  a  great  deal  of  his  writ- 


174          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

ing.  What  was  the  most  important  thing  he  said 
to  us?  He  said:  "Hang  your  sensibilities!  Stop 
your  snivelling  complaints,  and  your  equally  snivel- 
ling raptures !  Leave  off  your  general  emotional 
tomfoolery,  and  get  to  WORK  like  men !  "  But  this 
means  a  complete  rupture  with  the  subjectivist  phil- 
osophy of  things.  It  says  conduct,  and  not  sensibil- 
ity, is  the  ultimate  fact  for  our  recognition.  With 
the  vision  of  certain  works  to  be  done,  of  certain 
outward  changes  to  be  wrought  or  resisted,  it  says 
our  intellectual  horizon  terminates.  No  matter  how- 
we  succeed  in  doing  these  outward  duties,  whether 
gladly  and  spontaneously,  or  heavily  and  unwillingly, 
do  them  we  somehow  must ;  for  the  leaving  of  them 
undone  is  perdition.  No  matter  how  we  feel ;  if  we 
are  only  faithful  in  the  outward  act  and  refuse  to  do 
wrong,  the  world  will  in  so  far  be  safe,  and  we  quit  of 
our  debt  toward  it.  Take,  then,  the  yoke  upon  our 
shoulders ;  bend  our  neck  beneath  the  heavy  legality 
of  its  weight ;  regard  something  else  than  our  feeling 
as  our  limit,  our  master,  and  our  law ;  be  willing  to 
live  and  die  in  its  service,  —  and,  at  a  stroke,  we 
have  passed  from  the  subjective  into  the  objective 
philosophy  of  things,  much  as  one  awakens  from  some 
feverish  dream,  full  of  bad  lights  and  noises,  to  find 
one's  self  bathed  in  the  sacred  coolness  and  quiet  of 
the  air  of  the  night. 

But  what  is  the  essence  of  this  philosophy  of 
objective  conduct,  so  old-fashioned  and  finite,  but 
so  chaste  and  sane  and  strong,  when  compared  with 
its  romantic  rival?  It  is  the  recognition  of  limits, 
foreign  and  opaque  to  our  understanding.  It  is  the 
willingness,  after  bringing  about  some  external  good, 
to  feel  at  peace ;  for  our  responsibility  ends  with  the 


The  Dilemma  of  Determinism.          175 

performance  of  that  duty,  and  the  burden  of  the  rest 
we  may  lay  on  higher  powers.1 

"  Look  to  thyself,  O  Universe, 
Thou  art  better  and  not  worse," 

we  may  say  in  that  philosophy,  the  moment  we  have 
done  our  stroke  of  conduct,  however  small.  For  in 
the  view  of  that  philosophy  the  universe  belongs  to 
a  plurality  of  semi-independent  forces,  each  one  of 
which  may  help  or  hinder,  and  be  helped  or  hindered 
by,  the  operations  of  the  rest. 

But  this  brings  us  right  back,  after  such  a  long 
detour,  to  the  question  of  indeterminism  and  to  the 
conclusion  of  all  I  came  here  to  say  to-night.  For 
the  only  consistent  way  of  representing  a  pluralism  and 
a  world  whose  parts  may  affect  one  another  through 
their  conduct  being  either  good  or  bad  is  the  inde- 
terministic  way.  What  interest,  zest,  or  excitement 
can  there  be  in  achieving  the  right  way,  unless  we 
are  enabled  to  feel  that  the  wrong  way  is  also  a  pos- 
sible and  a  natural  way,  —  nay,  more,  a  menacing 
and  an  imminent  way?  And  what  sense  can  there 
be  in  condemning  ourselves  for  taking  the  wrong 
way,  unless  we  need  have  done  nothing  of  the  sort, 
unless  the  right  way  was  open  to  us  as  well  ?  I  can- 
not understand  the  willingness  to  act,  no  matter  how 
we  feel,  without  the  belief  that  acts  are  really  good 
and  bad.  I  cannot  understand  the  belief  that  an  act 
is  bad,  without  regret  at  its  happening.  I  cannot 
understand  regret  without  the  admission  of  real, 
genuine  possibilities  in  the  world.  Only  then  is  it 

1  The  burden,  for  example,  of  seeing  to  it  that  the  end  of  all  our 
righteousness  be  some  positive  universal  gain. 


176         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

other  than  a  mockery  to  feel,  after  we  have  failed  to 
do  our  best,  that  an  irreparable  opportunity  is  gone 
from  the  universe,  the  loss  of  which  it  must  forever 
after  mourn. 

If  you  insist  that  this  is  all  superstition,  that  pos- 
sibility is  in  the  eye  of  science  and  reason  impossi- 
bility, and  that  if  I  act  badly  'tis  that  the  universe 
was  foredoomed  to  suffer  this  defect,  you  fall  right 
back  into  the  dilemma,  the  labyrinth,  of  pessimism 
and  subjectivism,  from  out  of  whose  toils  we  have  just 
wound  our  way. 

Now,  we  are  of  course  free  to  fall  back,  if  we 
please.  For  my  own  part,  though,  whatever  difficul- 
ties may  beset  the  philosophy  of  objective  right  and 
wrong,  and  the  indeterminism  it  seems  to  imply, 
determinism,  with  its  alternative  of  pessimism  or 
romanticism,  contains  difficulties  that  are  greater 
still.  But  you  will  remember  that  I  expressly  repu- 
diated awhile  ago  the  pretension  to  offer  any  argu- 
ments which  could  be  coercive  in  a  so-called  scientific 
fashion  in  this  matter.  And  I  consequently  find 
myself,  at  the  end  of  this  long  talk,  obliged  to  state 
my  conclusions  in  an  altogether  personal  way.  This 
personal  method  of  appeal  seems  to  be  among  the 
very  conditions  of  the  problem ;  and  the  most  any 
one  can  do  is  to  confess  as  candidly  as  he  can  the 
grounds  for  the  faith  that  is  in  him,  and  leave  his 
example  to  work  on  others  as  it  may. 

Let  me,  then,  without  circumlocution  say  just  this. 
The  world  is  enigmatical  enough  in  all  conscience, 
whatever  theory  we  may  take  up  toward  it.  The 
indeterminism  I  defend,  the  free-will  theory  of  popu- 
lar sense  based  on  the  judgment  of  regret,  represents 


The  Dilemma  of  Determinism.          177 

that  world  as  vulnerable,  and  liable  to  be  injured  by 
certain  of  its  parts  if  they  act  wrong.  And  it  repre- 
sents their  acting  wrong  as  a  matter  of  possibility  or 
accident,  neither  inevitable  nor  yet  to  be  infallibly 
warded  off.  In  all  this,  it  is  a  theory  devoid  either 
of  transparency  or  of  stability.  It  gives  us  a  plural- 
istic, restless  universe,  in  which  no  single  point  of 
view  can  ever  take  in  the  whole  scene;  and  to  a 
mind  possessed  of  the  love  of  unity  at  any  cost,  it 
will,  no  doubt,  remain  forever  inacceptable.  A  friend 
with  such  a  mind  once  told  me  that  the  thought  of 
my  universe  made  him  sick,  like  the  sight  of  the 
horrible  motion  of  a  mass  of  maggots  in  their  car- 
rion bed. 

But  while  I  freely  admit  that  the  pluralism  and  the 
restlessness  are  repugnant  and  irrational  in  a  certain 
way,  I  find  that  every  alternative  to  them  is  irra- 
tional in  a  deeper  way.  The  indeterminism  with  its 
maggots,  if  you  please  to  speak  so  about  it,  offends 
only  the  native  absolutism  of  my  intellect,  —  an 
absolutism  which,  after  all,  perhaps,  deserves  to  be 
snubbed  and  kept  in  check.  But  the  determinism 
with  its  necessary  carrion,  to  continue  the  figure  of 
speech,  and  with  no  possible  maggots  to  eat  the  lat- 
ter up,  violates  my  sense  of  moral  reality  through 
and  through.  When,  for  example,  I  imagine  such 
carrion  as  the  Brockton  murder,  I  cannot  conceive  it 
as  an  act  by  which  the  universe,  as  a  whole,  logically 
and  necessarily  expresses  its  nature  without  shrink- 
ing from  complicity  with  such  a  whole.  And  I 
deliberately  refuse  to  keep  on  terms  of  loyalty  with 
the  universe  by  saying  blankly  that  the  murder,  since 
it  does  flow  from  the  nature  of  the  whole,  is  not 
carrion.  There  are  some  instinctive  reactions  which 

12 


178          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

I,  for  one,  will  not  tamper  with.  The  only  remain- 
ing alternative,  the  attitude  of  gnostical  romanticism, 
wrenches  my  personal  instincts  in  quite  as  violent  a 
way.  It  falsifies  the  simple  objectivity  of  their  deliv- 
erance. It  makes  the  goose-flesh  the  murder  excites 
in  me  a  sufficient  reason  for  the  perpetration  of  the 
crime.  It  transforms  life  from  a  tragic  reality  into 
an  insincere  melodramatic  exhibition,  as  foul  or  as 
tawdry  as  any  one's  diseased  curiosity  pleases  to 
carry  it  out.  And  with  its  consecration  of  the  '  ro- 
man  naturaliste '  state  of  mind,  and  its  enthronement 
of  the  baser  crew  of  Parisian  litterateurs  among  the 
eternally  indispensable  organs  by  which  the  infinite 
spirit  of  things  attains  to  that  subjective  illumina- 
tion which  is  the  task  of  its  life,  it  leaves  me  in  pre- 
sence of  a  sort  of  subjective  carrion  considerably 
more  noisome  than  the  objective  carrion  I  called  it  in 
to  take  away. 

No  !  better  a  thousand  times,  than  such  systematic 
corruption  of  our  moral  sanity,  the  plainest  pessi- 
mism, so  that  it  be  straightforward ;  but  better  far 
than  that  the  world  of  chance.  Make  as  great  an 
uproar  about  chance  as  you  please,  I  know  that 
chance  means  pluralism  and  nothing  more.  If  some 
of  the  members  of  the  pluralism  are  bad,  the  philos- 
ophy of  pluralism,  whatever  broad  views  it  may  deny 
me,  permits  me,  at  least,  to  turn  to  the  other  mem- 
bers with  a  clean  breast  of  affection  and  an  unsophis- 
ticated moral  sense.  And  if  I  still  wish  to  think  of 
the  world  as  a  totality,  it  lets  me  feel  that  a  world 
with  a  chance  in  it  of  being  altogether  good,  even  if 
the  chance  never  come  to  pass,  is  better  than  a  world 
with  no  such  chance  at  all.  That  '  chance  '  whose 
very  notion  I  am  exhorted  and  conjured  to  banish 


The  Dilemma  of  Determinism.          179 

from  my  view  of  the  future  as  the  suicide  of  reason 
concerning  it,  that  '  chance  '  is  —  what?  Just  this,  — 
the  chance  that  in  moral  respects  the  future  may  be 
other  and  better  than  the  past  has  been.  This  is  the 
only  chance  we  have  any  motive  for  supposing  to 
exist.  Shame,  rather,  on  its  repudiation  and  its  de- 
nial !  For  its  presence  is  the  vital  air  which  lets  the 
world  live,  the  salt  which  keeps  it  sweet. 

And  here  I  might  legitimately  stop,  having  ex- 
pressed all  I  care  to  see  admitted  by  others  to-night. 
But  I  know  that  if  I  do  stop  here,  misapprehensions 
will  remain  in  the  minds  of  some  of  you,  and  keep 
all  I  have  said  from  having  its  effect;  so  I  judge  it 
best  to  add  a  few  more  words. 

In  the  first  place,  in  spite  of  all  my  explanations,  the 
word  '  chance '  will  still  be  giving  trouble.  Though 
you  may  yourselves  be  adverse  to  the  deterministic 
doctrine,  you  wish  a  pleasanter  word  than  '  chance  ' 
to  name  the  opposite  doctrine  by;  and  you  very 
likely  consider  my  preference  for  such  a  word  a  per- 
verse sort  of  a  partiality  on  my  part.  It  certainly  is 
a  bad  word  to  make  converts  with ;  and  you  wish  I 
had  not  thrust  it  so  butt-foremost  at  you, — you  wish 
to  use  a  milder  term. 

Well,  I  admit  there  may  be  just  a  dash  of  pervers- 
ity in  its  choice.  The  spectacle  of  the  mere  word- 
grabbing  game  played  by  the  soft  determinists  has 
perhaps  driven  me  too  violently  the  other  way ;  and, 
rather  than  be  found  wrangling  with  them  for  the 
good  words,  I  am  willing  to  take  the  first  bad  one 
which  comes  along,  provided  it  be  unequivocal.  The 
question  is  of  things,  not  of  eulogistic  names  for  them ; 
and  the  best  word  is  the  one  that  enables  men  to 


180          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

know  the  quickest  whether  they  disagree  or  not  about 
the  things.  But  the  word  '  chance,'  with  its  singular 
negativity,  is  just  the  word  for  this  purpose.  Who- 
ever uses  it  instead  of '  freedom,'  squarely  and  reso- 
lutely gives  up  all  pretence  to  control  the  things  he 
says  are  free.  For  him,  he  confesses  that  they  are  no 
better  than  mere  chance  would  be.  It  is  a  word  of 
impotence,  and  is  therefore  the  only  sincere  word  we 
can  use,  if,  in  granting  freedom  to  certain  things,  we 
grant  it  honestly,  and  really  risk  the  game.  "  Who 
chooses  me  must  give  and  forfeit  all  he  hath."  Any 
other  word  permits  of  quibbling,  and  lets  us,  after  the 
fashion  of  the  soft  determinists,  make  a  pretence  of 
restoring  the  caged  bird  to  liberty  with  one  hand, 
while  with  the  other  we  anxiously  tie  a  string  to  its 
leg  to  make  sure  it  does  not  get  beyond  our  sight. 

But  now  you  will  bring  up  your  final  doubt.  Does 
not  the  admission  of  such  an  unguaranteed  chance  or 
freedom  preclude  utterly  the  notion  of  a  Providence 
governing  the  world?  Does  it  not  leave  the  fate  of 
the  universe  at  the  mercy  of  the  chance-possibilities, 
and  so  far  insecure?  Does  it  not,  in  short,  deny  the 
craving  of  our  nature  for  an  ultimate  peace  behind  all 
tempests,  for  a  blue  zenith  above  all  clouds? 

To  this  my  answer  must  be  very  brief.  The  belief 
in  free-will  is  not  in  the  least  incompatible  with  the 
belief  in  Providence,  provided  you  do  not  restrict  the 
Providence  to  fulminating  nothing  but  fatal  decrees. 
If  you  allow  him  to  provide  possibilities  as  well  as 
actualities  to  the  universe,  and  to  carry  on  his  own 
thinking  in  those  two  categories  just  as  we  do  ours, 
chances  may  be  there,  uncontrolled  even  by  him, 
and  the  course  of  the  universe  be  really  ambiguous; 


The  Dilemma  of  Determinism.          181 

and  yet  the  end  of  all  things  may  be  just  what  he 
intended  it  to  be  from  all  eternity. 

An  analogy  will  make  the  meaning  of  this  clear. 
Suppose  two  men  before  a  chessboard,  —  the  one  a 
novice,  the  other  an  expert  player  of  the  game.  The 
expert  intends  to  beat.  But  he  cannot  foresee 
exactly  what  any  one  actual  move  of  his  adversary 
may  be.  He  knows,  however,  all  the  possible  moves 
of  the  latter ;  and  he  knows  in  advance  how  to  meet 
each  of  them  by  a  move  of  his  own  which  leads  in 
the  direction  of  victory.  And  the  victory  infallibly 
arrives,  after  no  matter  how  devious  a  course,  in  the 
one  predestined  form  of  check-mate  to  the  novice's 
king. 

Let  now  the  novice  stand  for  us  finite  free  agents, 
and  the  expert  for  the  infinite  mind  in  which  the 
universe  lies.  Suppose  the  latter  to  be  thinking  out 
his  universe  before  he  actually  creates  it.  Suppose 
him  to  say,  I  will  lead  things  to  a  certain  end,  but  I 
will  not  now  *  decide  on  all  the  steps  thereto.  At 
various  points,  ambiguous  possibilities  shall  be  left 

1  This  of  course  leaves  the  creative  mind  subject  to  the  law  of 
time.  And  to  any  one  who  insists  on  the  timelessness  of  that  mind 
I  have  no  reply  to  make.  A  mind  to  whom  all  time  is  simultaneously 
present  must  see  all  things  under  the  form  of  actuality,  or  under 
some  form  to  us  unknown.  If  he  thinks  certain  moments  as  am- 
biguous in  their  content  while  future,  he  must  simultaneously  know 
how  the  ambiguity  will  have  been  decided  when  they  are  past.  So 
that  none  of  his  mental  judgments  can  possibly  be  called  hypothetical, 
and  his  world  is  one  from  which  chance  is  excluded.  Is  not,  how- 
ever, the  timeless  mind  rather  a  gratuitous  fiction  ?  And  is  not  the 
notion  of  eternity  being  given  at  a  stroke  to  omniscience  only  just 
another  way  of  whacking  upon  us  the  block-universe,  and  of  denying 
that  possibilities  exist  ?  —  just  the  point  to  be  proved.  To  say  that 
time  is  an  illusory  appearance  is  only  a  roundabout  manner  of  say- 
ing there  is  no  real  plurality,  and  that  the  frame  of  things  is  an 
absolute  unit.  Admit  plurality,  and  time  may  be  its  form. 


1 82          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

open,  either  of  which,  at  a  given  instant,  may  become 
actual.  But  whichever  branch  of  these  bifurcations 
become  real,  I  know  what  I  shall  do  at  the  next  bi- 
furcation to  keep  things  from  drifting  away  from  the 
final  result  I  intend.1 

The  creator's  plan  of  the  universe  would  thus  be 
left  blank  as  to  many  of  its  actual  details,  but  all 
possibilities  would  be  marked  down.  The  realization 
of  some  of  these  would  be  left  absolutely  to  chance ; 
that  is,  would  only  be  determined  when  the  moment 
of  realization  came.  Other  possibilities  would  be 
contingently  determined ;  that  is,  their  decision  would 
have  to  wait  till  it  was  seen  how  the  matters  of  ab- 
solute chance  fell  out.  But  the  rest  of  the  plan,  in- 
cluding its  final  upshot,  would  be  rigorously  deter- 
mined once  for  all.  So  the  creator  himself  would  not 
need  to  know  all  the  details  of  actuality  until  they 
came ;  and  at  any  time  his  own  view  of  the  world 
would  be  a  view  partly  of  facts  and  partly  of  possi- 
bilities, exactly  as  ours  is  now.  Of  one  thing,  how- 
ever, he  might  be  certain ;  and  that  is  that  his  world 
was  safe,  and  that  no  matter  how  much  it  might  zig- 
zag he  could  surely  bring  it  home  at  last. 

1  And  this  of  course  means  '  miraculous '  interposition,  but  not 
necessarily  of  the  gross  sort  our  fathers  took  such  delight  in  repre- 
senting, and  which  has  so  lost  its  magic  for  us.  Emerson  quotes 
some  Eastern  sage  as  saying  that  if  evil  were  really  done  under  the 
sun,  the  sky  would  incontinently  shrivel  to  a  snakeskin  and  cast  it 
out  in  spasms.  But,  says  Emerson,  the  spasms  of  Nature  are  years 
and  centuries ;  and  it  will  tax  man's  patience  to  wait  so  long.  We 
may  think  of  the  reserved  possibilities  God  keeps  in  his  own  hand, 
under  as  invisible  and  molecular  and  slowly  self-summating  a  form 
as  we  please.  We  may  think  of  them  as  counteracting  human 
agencies  which  he  inspires  ad  hoc.  In  short,  signs  and  wonders  and 
convulsions  of  the  earth  and  sky  are  not  the  only  neutralizers  of 
obstruction  to  a  god's  plans  of  which  it  is  possible  to  think. 


The  Dilemma  of  Determinism.          183 

Now,  it  is  entirely  immaterial,  in  this  scheme, 
whether  the  creator  leave  the  absolute  chance-possi- 
bilities to  be  decided  by  himself,  each  when  its  proper 
moment  arrives,  or  whether,  on  the  contrary,  he 
alienate  this  power  from  himself,  and  leave  the  de- 
cision out  and  out  to  finite  creatures  such  as  we  men 
are.  The  great  point  is  that  the  possibilities  are 
really  Jicre.  Whether  it  be  we  who  solve  them,  or  he 
working  through  us,  at  those  soul-trying  moments 
when  fate's  scales  seem  to  quiver,  and  good  snatches 
the  victory  from  evil  or  shrinks  nerveless  from  the 
fight,  is  of  small  account,  so  long  as  we  admit  that 
the  issue  is  decided  nowhere  else  than  here  and  now. 
That  is  what  gives  the  palpitating  reality  to  our  moral 
life  and  makes  it  tingle,  as  Mr.  Mallock  says,  with  so 
strange  and  elaborate  an  excitement.  This  reality, 
this  excitement,  are  what  the  determinisms,  hard  and 
soft  alike,  suppress  by  their  denial  that  anything  is 
decided  here  and  now,  and  their  dogma  that  all  things 
were  foredoomed  and  settled  long  ago.  If  it  be  so, 
may  you  and  I  then  have  been  foredoomed  to  the 
error  of  continuing  to  believe  in  liberty.1  It  is  for- 
tunate for  the  winding  up  of  controversy  that  in  every 
discussion  with  determinism  this  argumentum  ad 
hominem  can  be  its  adversary's  last  word. 

i  As  long  as  languages  contain  a  future  perfect  tense,  determinists, 
following  the  bent  of  laziness  or  passion,  the  lines  of  least  resistance, 
can  reply  in  that  tense,  saying,  "  It  will  have  been  fated,"  to  the  still 
small  voice  which  urges  an  opposite  course ;  and  thus  excuse  then* 
selves  from  effort  in  a  quite  unanswerable  way. 


184          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 


THE   MORAL  PHILOSOPHER  AND  THE 
MORAL   LIFE.1 

THE  main  purpose  of  this  paper  is  to  show  that 
there  is  no  such  thing  possible  as  an  ethical 
philosophy  dogmatically  made  up  in  advance.  We 
all  help  to  determine  the  content  of  ethical  philosophy 
so  far  as  we  contribute  to  the  race's  moral  life.  In 
other  words,  there  can  be  no  final  truth  in  ethics  any 
more  than  in  physics,  until  the  last  man  has  had  his 
experience  and  said  his  say.  In  the  one  case  as  in 
the  other,  however,  the  hypotheses  which  we  now 
make  while  waiting,  and  the  acts  to  which  they 
prompt  us,  are  among  the  indispensable  conditions 
which  determine  what  that  '  say '  shall  be. 

First  of  all,  what  is  the  position  of  him  who  seeks 
an  ethical  philosophy?  To  begin  with,  he  must  be 
distinguished  from  all  those  who  are  satisfied  to  be 
ethical  sceptics.  He  will  not  be  a  sceptic;  there- 
fore so  far  from  ethical  scepticism  being  one  possible 
fruit  of  ethical  philosophizing,  it  can  only  be  regarded 
as  that  residual  alternative  to  all  philosophy  which 
from  the  outset  menaces  every  would-be  philosopher 
who  may  give  up  the  quest  discouraged,  and  renounce 
his  original  aim.  That  aim  is  to  find  an  account  of 
the  moral  relations  that  obtain  among  things,  which 

1  An  Address  to  the  Yale  Philosophical  Club,  published  in  the 
International  Journal  of  Ethics,  April,  1891. 


The  Moral  Philosopher  and  Moral  Life.     185 

will  weave  them  into  the  unity  of  a  stable  system,  and 
make  of  the  world  what  one  may  call  a  genuine  uni- 
verse from  the  ethical  point  of  view.  So  far  as  the 
world  resists  reduction  to  the  form  of  unity,  so  far  as 
ethical  propositions  seem  unstable,  so  far  does  the 
philosopher  fail  of  his  ideal.  The  subject-matter  of 
his  study  is  the  ideals  he  finds  existing  in  the  world ; 
the  purpose  which  guides  him  is  this  ideal  of  his  own, 
of  getting  them  into  a  certain  form.  This  ideal  is 
thus  a  factor  in  ethical  philosophy  whose  legitimate 
presence  must  never  be  overlooked ;  it  is  a  positive 
contribution  which  the  philosopher  himself  necessa- 
rily makes  to  the  problem.  But  it  is  his  only  positive 
contribution.  At  the  outset  of  his  inquiry  he  ought  to 
have  no  other  ideals.  Were  he  interested  peculiarly 
in  the  triumph  of  any  one  kind  of  good,  he  would  pro 
tanto  cease  to  be  a  judicial  investigator,  and  become 
an  advocate  for  some  limited  element  of  the  case. 

There  are  three  questions  in  ethics  which  must  be 
kept  apart.  Let  them  be  called  respectively  the  psy- 
chological question,  the  metaphysical  question,  and  the 
casuistic  question.  The  psychological  question  asks 
after  the  historical  origin  of  our  moral  ideas  and  judg- 
ments ;  the  metaphysical  question  asks  what  the  very 
meaning  of  the  words  '  good/  '  ill,1  and  '  obligation ' 
are ;  the  casuistic  question  asks  what  is  the  measure 
of  the  various  goods  and  ills  which  men  recognize, 
so  that  the  philosopher  may  settle  the  true  order  of 
human  obligations. 

I. 

The  psychological  question  is  for  most  disputants 
the  only  question.  When  your  ordinary  doctor  of 


1 86          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

divinity  has  proved  to  his  own  satisfaction  that  an 
altogether  unique  faculty  called  '  conscience  '  must  be 
postulated  to  tell  us  what  is  right  and  what  is  wrong; 
or  when  your  popular-science  enthusiast  has  pro- 
claimed that  '  apriorism  '  is  an  exploded  superstition, 
and  that  our  moral  judgments  have  gradually  resulted 
from  the  teaching  of  the  environment,  each  of  these 
persons  thinks  that  ethics  is  settled  and  nothing  more 
is  to  be  said.  The  familiar  pair  of  names,  Intuitionist 
and  Evolutionist,  so  commonly  used  now  to  connote 
all  possible  differences  in  ethical  opinion,  really  refer 
to  the  psychological  question  alone.  The  discussion 
of  this  question  hinges  so  much  upon  particular  de- 
tails that  it  is  impossible  to  enter  upon  it  at  all  within 
the  limits  of  this  paper.  I  will  therefore  only  express 
dogmatically  my  own  belief,  which  is  this,  —  that  the 
Benthams,  the  Mills,  and  the  Bains  have  done  a  lasting 
service  in  taking  so  many  of  our  human  ideals  and 
showing  how  they  must  have  arisen  from  the  asso- 
ciation with  acts  of  simple  bodily  pleasures  and  reliefs 
from  pain.  Association  with  many  remote  pleasures 
will  unquestionably  make  a  thing  significant  of  good- 
ness in  our  minds ;  and  the  more  vaguely  the  good- 
ness is  conceived  of,  the  more  mysterious  will  its 
source  appear  to  be.  But  it  is  surely  impossible  to 
explain  all  our  sentiments  and  preferences  in  this 
simple  way.  The  more  minutely  psychology  studies 
human  nature,  the  more  clearly  it  finds  there  traces 
of  secondary  affections,  relating  the  impressions  of 
the  environment  with  one  another  and  with  our 
impulses  in  quite  different  ways  from  those  mere 
associations  of  coexistence  and  succession  which  are 
practically  all  that  pure  empiricism  can  admit.  Take 
the  love  of  drunkenness ;  take  bashfulness,  the  terror 


The  Moral  Philosopher  and  Moral  Life.     187 

of  high  places,  the  tendency  to  sea-sickness,  to  faint 
at  the  sight  of  blood,  the  susceptibility  to  musical 
sounds ;  take  the  emotion  of  the  comical,  the  passion 
for  poetry,  for  mathematics,  or  for  metaphysics,  — 
no  one  of  these  things  can  be  wholly  explained  by 
either  association  or  utility.  They  go  with  other 
things  that  can  be  so  explained,  no  doubt ;  and  some 
of  them  are  prophetic  of  future  utilities,  since  there  is 
nothing  in  us  for  which  some  use  may  not  be  found. 
But  their  origin  is  in  incidental  complications  to  our 
cerebral  structure,  a  structure  whose  original  features 
arose  with  no  reference  to  the  perception  of  such  dis- 
cords and  harmonies  as  these. 

Well,  a  vast  number  of  our  moral  perceptions  also 
are  certainly  of  this  secondary  and  brain-born  kind. 
They  deal  with  directly  felt  fitnesses  between  things, 
and  often  fly  in  the  teeth  of  all  the  prepossessions 
•)f  habit  and  presumptions  of  utility.  The  moment 
you  get  beyond  the  coarser  and  more  commonplace 
moral  maxims,  the  Decalogues  and  Poor  Richard's 
Almanacs,  you  fall  into  schemes  and  positions  which 
to  the  eye  of  common-sense  are  fantastic  and  over- 
strained. The  sense  for  abstract  justice  which  some 
persons  have  is  as  excentric  a  variation,  from  the 
natural-history  point  of  view,  as  is  the  passion  for 
music  or  for  the  higher  philosophical  consistencies 
which  consumes  the  soul  of  others.  The  feeling  of 
the  inward  dignity  of  certain  spiritual  attitudes,  as 
peace,  serenity,  simplicity,  veracity ;  and  of  the  es- 
sential vulgarity  of  others,  as  querulousness,  anxiety, 
egoistic  fussiness,  etc.,  —  are  quite  inexplicable  ex- 
cept by  an  innate  preference  of  the  more  ideal 
attitude  for  its  own  pure  sake.  The  nobler  thing 
tastes  better,  and  that  is  all  that  we  can  say.  '  Ex- 


1 88          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

perience '  of  consequences  may  truly  teach  us  what 
things  are  wicked,  but  what  have  consequences  to 
do  with  what  is  mean  and  vulgar?  If  a  man  has 
shot  his  wife's  paramour,  by  reason  of  what  sub- 
tile repugnancy  in  things  is  it  that  we  are  so  dis- 
gusted when  we  hear  that  the  wife  and  the  husband 
have  made  it  up  and  are  living  comfortably  together 
again?  Or  if  the  hypothesis  were  offered  us  of  a 
world  in  which  Messrs.  Fourier's  and  Bellamy's  and 
Morris's  Utopias  should  all  be  outdone,  and  millions 
kept  permanently  happy  on  the  one  simple  condition 
that  a  certain  lost  soul  on  the  far-off  edge  of  things 
should  lead  a  life  of  lonely  torture,  what  except  a 
specifical  and  independent  sort  of  emotion  can  it  be 
which  would  make  us  immediately  feel,  even  though 
an  impulse  arose  within  us  to  clutch  at  the  happiness 
so  offered,  how  hideous  a  thing  would  be  its  enjoy- 
ment when  deliberately  accepted  as  the  fruit  of  such 
a  bargain?  To  what,  once  more,  but  subtile  brain- 
born  feelings  of  discord  can  be  due  all  these  recent 
protests  against  the  entire  race-tradition  of  retributive 
justice  ?  —  I  refer  to  TolstoK  with  his  ideas  of  non- 
resistance,  to  Mr.  Bellamy  with  his  substitution  of 
oblivion  for  repentance  (in  his  novel  of  Dr.  Heiden- 
hain's  Process),  to  M.  Guyau  with  his  radical  con- 
demnation of  the  punitive  ideal.  All  these  subtileties 
of  the  moral  sensibility  go  as  much  beyond  what  can 
be  ciphered  out  from  the  'laws  of  association'  as 
the  delicacies  of  sentiment  possible  between  a  pair 
of  young  lovers  go  beyond  such  precepts  of  the 
'etiquette  to  be  observed  during  engagement'  as 
are  printed  in  manuals  of  social  form. 

No  !     Purely  inward  forces  are  certainly  at  work 
here.     All  the  higher,   more  penetrating  ideals  are 


The  Moral  Philosopher  and  Moral  Life.     189 

revolutionary.  They  present  themselves  far  less  in 
the  guise  of  effects  of  past  experience  than  in  that  of 
probable  causes  of  future  experience,  factors  to  which 
the  environment  and  the  lessons  it  has  so  far  taught 
ds  must  learn  to  bend. 

This  is  all  I  can  say  of  the  psychological  question 
now.  In  the  last  chapter  of  a  recent  work 1  I  have 
sought  to  prove  in  a  general  way  the  existence,  in  our 
thought,  of  relations  which  do  not  merely  repeat  the 
couplings  of  experience.  Our  ideals  have  certainly 
many  sources.  They  are  not  all  explicable  as  signify- 
ing corporeal  pleasures  to  be  gained,  and  pains  to  be 
escaped.  And  for  having  so  constantly  perceived 
this  psychological  fact,  we  must  applaud  the  intui- 
tionist  school.  Whether  or  not  such  applause  must 
be  extended  to  that  school's  other  characteristics  will 
appear  as  we  take  up  the  following  questions. 

The  next  one  in  order  is  the  metaphysical  question, 
of  what  we  mean  by  the  words  '  obligation,'  '  good,' 
and  '  ill.' 

II. 

First  of  all,  it  appears  that  such  words  can  have  no 
application  or  relevancy  in  a  world  in  which  no 
sentient  life  exists.  Imagine  an  absolutely  material 
world,  containing  only  physical  and  chemical  facts, 
and  existing  from  eternity  without  a  God,  without 
even  an  interested  spectator:  would  there  be  any 
sense  in  saying  of  that  world  that  one  of  its  states  is 
better  than  another?  Or  if  there  were  two  such 
worlds  possible,  would  there  be  any  rhyme  or  reason 
in  calling  one  good  and  the  other  bad,  —  good  or 

i  The  Principles  of  Psychology,  New  York,  H.  Holt  &  Co« 
1890. 


190          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

bad  positively,  I  mean,  and  apart  from  the  fact  that 
•one  might  relate  itself  better  than  the  other  to  the 
philosopher's  private  interests?  'But  we  must  leave 
these  private  interests  out  of  the  account,  for  the 
philosopher  is  a  mental  fact,  and  we  are  asking  whether 
goods  and  evils  and  obligations  exist  in  physical  facts 
per  se.  Surely  there  is  no  status  for  good  and  evil  to 
exist  in,  in  a  purely  insentient  world.  How  can  one 
physical  fact,  considered  simply  as  a  physical  fact,  be 
'better'  than  another?  Betterness  is  not  a  physical 
relation.  In  its  mere  material  capacity,  a  thing  can 
no  more  be  good  or  bad  than  it  can  be  pleasant  or 
painful.  Good  for  what?  Good  for  the  production 
of  another  physical  fact,  do  you  say?  But  what  in  a 
purely  physical  universe  demands  the  production  of 
that  other  fact?  Physical  facts  simply  are  or  are 
not ;  and  neither  when  present  or  absent,  can  they 
be  supposed  to  make  demands.  If  they  do,  they  can 
only  do  so  by  having  desires ;  and  then  they  have 
ceased  to  be  purely  physical  facts,  and  have  become 
facts  of  conscious  sensibility.  Goodness,  badness,  and 
obligation  must  be  realized  somewhere  in  order  really 
to  exist ;  and  the  first  step  in  ethical  philosophy  is  to 
see  that  no  merely  inorganic  '  nature  of  things '  can 
realize  them.  Neither  moral  relations  nor  the  moral 
law  can  swing  in  vacuo.  Their  only  habitat  can  be  a 
mind  which  feels  them ;  and  no  world  composed  of 
merely  physical  facts  can  possibly  be  a  world  to  which 
ethical  propositions  apply. 

The  moment  one  sentient  being,  however,  is  made 
a  part  of  the  universe,  there  is  a  chance  for  goods 
and  evils  really  to  exist.  Moral  relations  now  have 
their  status,  in  that  being's  consciousness.  So  far  as 
he  feels  anything  to  be  good,  he  makes  it  good.  It 


The  Moral  Philosopher  and  Moral  Life.     191 

is  good,  for  him ;  and  being  good  for  him,  is  abso- 
lutely good,  for  he  is  the  sole  creator  of  values  in 
that  universe,  and  outside  of  his  opinion  things  have 
no  moral  character  at  all. 

In  such  a  universe  as  that  it  would  of  course  be 
absurd  to  raise  the  question  of  whether  the  solitary 
thinker's  judgments  of  good  and  ill  are  true  or  not. 
Truth  supposes  a  standard  outside  of  the  thinker  to 
which  he  must  conform ;  but  here  the  thinker  is  a 
sort  of  divinity,  subject  to  no  higher  judge.  Let  us 
call  the  supposed  universe  which  he  inhabits  a  moral 
solitude.  In  such  a  moral  solitude  it  is  clear  that 
there  can  be  no  outward  obligation,  and  that  the  only 
trouble  the  god-like  thinker  is  liable  to  have  will  be 
over  the  consistency  of  his  own  several  ideals  with 
one  another.  Some  of  these  will  no  doubt  be  more 
pungent  and  appealing  than  the  rest,  their  goodness 
will  have  a  profounder,  more  penetrating  taste ;  they 
will  return  to  haunt  him  with  more  obstinate  regrets 
if  violated.  So  the  thinker  will  have  to  order  his  life 
with  them  as  its  chief  determinants,  or  else  remain 
inwardly  discordant  and  unhappy.  Into  whatever 
equilibrium  he  may  settle,  though,  and  however  he 
may  straighten  out  his  system,  it  will  be  a  right  sys- 
tem ;  for  beyond  the  facts  of  his  own  subjectivity 
there  is  nothing  moral  in  the  world. 

If  now  we  introduce  a  second  thinker  with  his  likes 
and  dislikes  into  the  universe,  the  ethical  situation 
becomes  much  more  complex,  and  several  possibili- 
ties are  immediately  seen  to  obtain. 

One  of  these  is  that  the  thinkers  may  ignore  each 
other's  attitude  about  good  and  evil  altogether,  and 
each  continue  to  indulge  his  own  preferences,  indif- 
ferent to  what  the  other  may  feel  or  do.  In  such  a 


192         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

case  we  have  a  world  with  twice  as  much  of  the  ethical 
quality  in  it  as  our  moral  solitude,  only  it  is  without 
ethical  unity.  The  same  object  is  good  or  bad  there, 
according  as  you  measure  it  by  the  view  which  this 
one  or  that  one  of  the  thinkers  takes.  Nor  can  you 
find  any  possible  ground  in  such  a  world  for  saying 
that  one  thinker's  opinion  is  more  correct  than  the 
other's,  or  that  either  has  the  trurer  moral  sense.  Such 
a  world,  in  short,  is  not  a  moral  universe  but  a  moral 
dualism.  Not  only  is  there  no  single  point  of  view 
within  it  from  which  the  values  of  things  can  be  une- 
quivocally judged,  but  there  is  not  even  a  demand 
for  such  a  point  of  view,  since  the  two  thinkers  are 
supposed  to  be  indifferent  to  each  other's  thoughts 
and  acts.  Multiply  the  thinkers  into  a  pluralism,  and 
we  find  realized  for  us  in  the  ethical  sphere  something 
like  that  world  which  the  antique  sceptics  conceived 
of,  —  in  which  individual  minds  are  the  measures  of 
all  things,  and  in  which  no  one  '  objective '  truth, 
but  only  a  multitude  of '  subjective '  opinions,  can  be 
found. 

But  this  is  the  kind  of  world  with  which  the  philo- 
sopher, so  long  as  he  holds  to  the  hope  of  a  philoso- 
phy, will  not  put  up.  Among  the  various  ideals  rep- 
resented, there  must  be,  he  thinks,  some  which  have 
the  more  truth  or  authority ;  and  to  these  the  others 
ought  to  yield,  so  that  system  and  subordination 
may  reign.  Here  in  the  word  '  ought '  the  notion  of 
obligation  comes  emphatically  into  view,  and  the 
next  thing  in  order  must  be  to  make  its  meaning 
clear. 

Since  the  outcome  of  the  discussion  so  far  has  been 
to  show  us  that  nothing  can  be  good  or  right  except 


The  Moral  Philosopher  and  Moral  Life.     193 

so  far  as  some  consciousness  feels  it  to  be  good  or 
thinks  it  to  be  right,  we  perceive  on  the  very  thresh- 
old that  the  real  superiority  and  authority  which  are 
postulated  by  the  philosopher  to  reside  in  some  of 
the  opinions,  and  the  really  inferior  character  which 
ne  supposes  must  belong  to  others,  cannot  be  ex- 
plained by  any  abstract  moral  '  nature  of  things ' 
existing  antecedently  to  the  concrete  thinkers  them- 
selves with  their  ideals.  Like  the  positive  attributes 
good  and  bad,  the  comparative  ones  better  and  worse 
must  be  realized  in  order  to  be  real.  If  one  ideal 
judgment  be  objectively  better  than  another,  that 
betterness  must  be  made  flesh  by  being  lodged  con- 
cretely in  some  one's  actual  perception.  It  cannot 
float  in  the  atmosphere,  for  it  is  not  a  sort  of  mete- 
orological phenomenon,  like  the  aurora  borealis  or 
the  zodiacal  light.  Its  esse  is  percipi,  like  the  esse  of 
the  ideals  themselves  between  which  it  obtains.  The 
philosopher,  therefore,  who  seeks  to  know  which  ideal 
ought  to  have  supreme  weight  and  which  one  ought 
to  be  subordinated,  must  trace  the  ought  itself  to  the 
de  facto  constitution  of  some  existing  consciousness, 
behind  which,  as  one  of  the  data  of  the  universe,  he 
as  a  purely  ethical  philosopher  is  unable  to  go.  This 
consciousness  must  make  the  one  ideal  right  by  feel- 
ing it  to  be  right,  the  other  wrong  by  feeling  it  to 
be  wrong.  But  now  what  particular  consciousness  in 
the  universe  can  enjoy  this  prerogative  of  obliging 
others  to  conform  to  a  rule  which  it  lays  down? 

If  one  of  the  thinkers  were  obviously  divine,  while 
all  the  rest  were  human,  there  would  probably  be 
no  practical  dispute  about  the  matter.  The  divine 
thought  would  be  the  model,  to  which  the  others 
should  conform.  But  still  the  theoretic  question 

«J 


194          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

would  remain,  What  is  the  ground  of  the  obligation, 
even  here? 

In  our  first  essays  at  answering  this  question,  there 
is  an  inevitable  tendency  to  slip  into  an  assumption 
which  ordinary  men  follow  when  they  are  disputing 
with  one  another  about  questions  of  good  and  bad. 
They  imagine  an  abstract  moral  order  in  which  the 
objective  truth  resides ;  and  each  tries  to  prove  that 
this  pre-existing  order  is  more  accurately  reflected  in 
his  own  ideas  than  in  those  of  his  adversary.  It  is 
because  one  disputant  is  backed  by  this  overarching 
abstract  order  that  we  think  the  other  should  submit. 
Even  so,  when  it  is  a  question  no  longer  of  two  finite 
thinkers,  but  of  God  and  ourselves, — we  follow  our 
usual  habit,  and  imagine  a  sort  of  de  jure  relation, 
which  antedates  and  overarches  the  mere  facts,  and 
would  make  it  right  that  we  should  conform  our 
thoughts  to  God's  thoughts,  even  though  he  made 
no  claim  to  that  effect,  and  though  we  preferred  de 
facto  to  go  on  thinking  for  ourselves. 

But  the  moment  we  take  a  steady  look  at  the  ques- 
tion, we  see  not  only  that  without  a  claim  actually 
made  by  some  concrete  person  there  can  be  no  obliga- 
tion, but  that  there  is  some  obligation  wherever  there 
is  a  claim.  Claim  and  obligation  are,  in  fact,  coex- 
tensive terms ;  they  cover  each  other  exactly.  Our 
ordinary  attitude  of  regarding  ourselves  as  subject 
to  an  overarching  system  of  moral  relations,  true  '  in 
themselves,'  is  therefore  either  an  out-and-out  super- 
stition, or  else  it  must  be  treated  as  a  merely  provi- 
sional abstraction  from  that  real  Thinker  in  whose 
actual  demand  upon  us  to  think  as  he  does  our 
obligation  must  be  ultimately  based.  In  a  theistic- 
ethical  philosophy  that  thinker  in  question  is,  of 


The  Moral  Philosopher  and  Moral  Life.     195 

course,  the  Deity  to  whom  the  existence  of  the 
universe  is  due. 

I  know  well  how  hard  it  is  for  those  who  are 
accustomed  to  what  I  have  called  the  superstitious 
view,  to  realize  that  every  de  facto  claim  creates  in  so 
far  forth  an  obligation.  We  inveterately  think  that 
something  which  we  call  the  '  validity '  of  the  claim  is 
what  gives  to  it  its  obligatory  character,  and  that  this 
validity  is  something  outside  of  the  claim's  mere  ex- 
istence as  a  matter  of  fact.  It  rains  down  upon  the 
claim,  we  think,  from  some  sublime  dimension  of 
being,  which  the  moral  law  inhabits,  much  as  upon 
the  steel  of  the  compass-needle  the  influence  of  the 
Pole  rains  down  from  out  of  the  starry  heavens.  But 
again,  how  can  such  an  inorganic  abstract  character 
of  imperativeness,  additional  to  the  imperativeness 
which  is  in  the  concrete  claim  itself,  exist?  Take  any 
demand,  however  slight,  which  any  creature,  however 
weak,  may  make.  Ought  it  not,  for  its  own  sole  sake, 
to  be  satisfied?  If  not,  prove  why  not.  The  only 
possible  kind  of  proof  you  could  adduce  would  be 
the  exhibition  of  another  creature  who  should  make 
a  demand  that  ran  the  other  way.  The  only  possible 
reason  there  can  be  why  any  phenomenon  ought  to 
exist  is  that  such  a  phenomenon  actually  is  desired. 
Any  desire  is  imperative  to  the  extent  of  its  amount; 
it  makes  itself  valid  by  the  fact  that  it  exists  at  all. 
Some  desires,  truly  enough,  are  small  desires ;  they 
are  put  forward  by  insignificant  persons,  and  we  cus- 
tomarily make  light  of  the  obligations  which  they 
bring.  But  the  fact  that  such  personal  demands  as 
these  impose  small  obligations  does  not  keep  the 
largest  obligations  from  being  personal  demands. 

If  we  must  talk  impersonally,  to  be  sure  we  can  say 


196          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

that '  the  universe '  requires,  exacts,  or  makes  obliga- 
tory such  or  such  an  action,  whenever  it  expresses 
itself  through  the  desires  of  such  or  such  a  creature. 
But  it  is  better  not  to  talk  about  the  universe  in  this 
personified  way,  unless  we  believe  in  a  universal  or 
divine  consciousness  which  actually  exists.  If  there 
be  such  a  consciousness,  then  its  demands  carry  the 
most  of  obligation  simply  because  they  are  the  great 
est  in  amount.  But  it  is  even  then  not  abstractly 
right  that  we  should  respect  them.  It  is  only  con- 
cretely right,  —  or  right  after  the  fact,  and  by  virtue 
of  the  fact,  that  they  are  actually  made.  Suppose  we 
do  not  respect  them,  as  seems  largely  to  be  the  case 
in  this  queer  world.  That  ought  not  to  be,  we  say ; 
that  is  wrong.  But  in  what  way  is  this  fact  of  wrong- 
ness  made  more  acceptable  or  intelligible  when  we 
imagine  it  to  consist  rather  in  the  laceration  of  an  a 
priori  ideal  order  than  in  the  disappointment  of  a  living 
personal  God?  Do  we,  perhaps,  think  that  we  cover 
God  and  protect  him  and  make  his  impotence  over  us 
less  ultimate,  when  we  back  him  up  with  this  a  priori 
blanket  from  which  he  may  draw  some  warmth  of 
further  appeal?  But  the  only  force  of  appeal  to  us, 
which  either  a  living  God  or  an  abstract  ideal  order 
can  wield,  is  found  in  the  '  everlasting  ruby  vaults '  of 
our  own  human  hearts,  as  they  happen  to  beat  re- 
sponsive and  not  irresponsive  to  the  claim.  So  far  as 
they  do  feel  it  when  made  by  a  living  consciousness, 
it  is  life  answering  to  life.  A  claim  thus  livingly  ac- 
knowledged is  acknowledged  with  a  solidity  and  ful- 
ness which  no  thought  of  an  '  ideal '  backing  can 
render  more  complete ;  while  if,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  heart's  response  is  withheld,  the  stubborn  phe- 
nomenon is  there  of  an  impotence  in  the  claims 


The  Moral  Philosopher  and  Moral  Life.     197 

which  the  universe  embodies,  which  no  talk  about 
an  eternal  nature  of  things  can  gloze  over  or  dispel. 
An  ineffective  d  priori  order  is  as  impotent  a  thing 
as  an  ineffective  God ;  and  in  the  eye  of  philosophy, 
it  is  as  hard  a  thing  to  explain. 

We  may  now  consider  that  what  we  distinguished 
as  the  metaphysical  question  in  ethical  philosophy 
is  sufficiently  answered,  and  that  we  have  learned 
what  the  words  '  good,'  '  bad,'  and  '  obligation '  sev- 
erally mean.  They  mean  no  absolute  natures,  inde- 
pendent of  personal  support.  They  are  objects  of 
feeling  and  desire,  which  have  no  foothold  or  anchor- 
age in  Being,  apart  from  the  existence  of  actually 
living  minds. 

Wherever  such  minds  exist,  with  judgments  of 
good  and  ill,  and  demands  upon  one  another,  there 
is  an  ethical  world  in  its  essential  features.  Were 
all  other  things,  gods  and  men  and  starry  heavens, 
blotted  out  from  this  universe,  and  were  there  left 
but  one  rock  with  two  loving  souls  upon  it,  that  rock 
would  have  as  thoroughly  moral  a  constitution  as  any 
possible  world  which  the  eternities  and  immensities 
could  harbor.  It  would  be  a  tragic  constitution,  be- 
cause the  rock's  inhabitants  would  die.  But  while 
they  lived,  there  would  be  real  good  things  and  real 
bad  things  in  the  universe ;  there  would  be  obliga- 
tions, claims,  and  expectations ;  obediences,  refusals, 
and  disappointments ;  compunctions  and  longings  for 
harmony  to  come  again,  and  inward  peace  of  con- 
science when  it  was  restored ;  there  would,  in  short, 
be  a  moral  life,  whose  active  energy  would  have  no 
limit  but  the  intensity  of  interest  in  each  other  with 
which  the  hero  and  heroine  might  be  endowed. 


198          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

We,  on  this  terrestrial  globe,  so  far  as  the  visible 
facts  go,  are  just  like  the  inhabitants  of  such  a  rock. 
Whether  a  God  exist,  or  whether  no  God  exist,  in 
yon  blue  heaven  above  us  bent,  we  form  at  any  rate 
an  ethical  republic  here  below.  And  the  first  reflec- 
tion which  this  leads  to  is  that  ethics  have  as  genu- 
ine and  real  a  foothold  in  a  universe  where  the  highest 
consciousness  is  human,  as  in  a  universe  where  there 
is  a  God  as  well.  '  The  religion  of  humanity  '  affords 
a  basis  for  ethics  as  well  as  theism  does.  Whether 
the  purely  human  system  can  gratify  the  philoso- 
pher's demand  as  well  as  the  other  is  a  different  ques- 
tion, which  we  ourselves  must  answer  ere  we  close. 


III. 

The  last  fundamental  question  in  Ethics  was,  it  will 
be  remembered,  the  casuistic  question.  Here  we  are, 
in  a  world  where  the  existence  of  a  divine  thinker  has 
been  and  perhaps  always  will  be  doubted  by  some  of 
the  lookers-on,  and  where,  in  spite  of  the  presence 
of  a  large  number  of  ideals  in  which  human  beings 
agree,  there  are  a  mass  of  others  about  which  no 
general  consensus  obtains.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to 
present  a  literary  picture  of  this,  for  the  facts  are  too 
well  known.  The  wars  of  the  flesh  and  the  spirit  in 
each  man,  the  concupiscences  of  different  individuals 
pursuing  the  same  unshareable  material  or  social 
prizes,  the  ideals  which  contrast  so  according  to  races, 
circumstances,  temperaments,  philosophical  beliefs, 
etc.,  —  all  form  a  maze  of  apparently  inextricable  con- 
fusion with  no  obvious  Ariadne's  thread  to  lead  one 
out.  Yet  the  philosopher,  just  because  he  is  a  philo- 
sopher, adds  his  own  peculiar  ideal  to  the  confusion 


The  Moral  Philosopher  and  Moral  Life.     199 

(with  which  if  he  were  willing  to  be  a  sceptic  he 
would  be  passably  content),  and  insists  that  over  all 
these  individual  opinions  there  is  a  system  of  trutli 
which  he  can  discover  if  he  only  takes  sufficient  pains. 

We  stand  ourselves  at  present  in  the  place  of  that 
philosopher,  and  must  not  fail  to  realize  all  the  features 
that  the  situation  comports.  In  the  first  place  we 
will  not  be  sceptics;  we  hold  to  it  that  there  is  a 
truth  to  be  ascertained.  But  in  the  second  place  we 
have  just  gained  the  insight  that  that  truth  cannot  be 
a  self-proclaiming  set  of  laws,  or  an  abstract  '  moral 
reason,'  but  can  only  exist  in  act,  or  in  the  shape  of 
an  opinion  held  by  some  thinker  really  to  be  found. 
There  is,  however,  no  visible  thinker  invested  with 
authority.  Shall  we  then  simply  proclaim  our  own 
ideals  as  the  lawgiving  ones  ?  No  ;  for  if  we  are  true 
philosophers  we  must  throw  our  own  spontaneous 
ideals,  even  the  dearest,  impartially  in  with  that  total 
mass  of  ideals  which  are  fairly  to  be  judged.  But  how 
then  can  we  as  philosophers  ever  find  a  test;  how 
avoid  complete  moral  scepticism  on  the  one  hand, 
and  on  the  other  escape  bringing  a  wayward  personal 
standard  of  our  own  along  with  us,  on  which  we  sim- 
ply pin  our  faith? 

The  dilemma  is  a  hard  one,  nor  does  it  grow  a  bit 
more  easy  as  we  revolve  it  in  our  minds.  The  entire 
undertaking  of  the  philosopher  obliges  him  to  seek 
an  impartial  test.  That  test,  however,  must  be  incar- 
nated in  the  demand  of  some  actually  existent  per- 
son ;  and  how  can  he  pick  out  the  person  save  by  an 
act  in  which  his  own  sympathies  and  prepossessions 
are  implied? 

One  method  indeed  presents  itself,  and  has  as  a 
matter  of  history  been  taken  by  the  more  serious 


2OO          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy*. 

ethical  schools.  If  the  heap  of  things  demanded 
proved  on  inspection  less  chaotic  than  at  first  they 
seemed,  if  they  furnished  their  own  relative  test  and 
measure,  then  the  casuistic  problem  would  be  solved. 
If  it  were  found  that  all  goods  quA  goods  contained  a 
common  essence,  then  the  amount  of  this  essence 
involved  in  any  one  good  would  show  its  rank  in  the 
scale  of  goodness,  and  order  could  be  quickly  made ; 
for  this  essence  would  be  the  good  upon  which  all 
thinkers  were  agreed,  the  relatively  objective  and 
universal  good  that  the  philosopher  seeks.  Even  his 
own  private  ideals  would  be  measured  by  their  share 
of  it,  and  find  their  rightful  place  among  the  rest. 

Various  essences  of  good  have  thus  been  found  and 
proposed  as  bases  of  the  ethical  system.  Thus,  to  be 
a  mean  between  two  extremes ;  to  be  recognized  by 
a  special  intuitive  faculty ;  to  make  the  agent  happy 
for  the  moment;  to  make  others  as  well  as  him 
happy  in  the  long  run ;  to  add  to  his  perfection  or 
dignity ;  to  harm  no  one ;  to  follow  from  reason  or 
flow  from  universal  law ;  to  be  in  accordance  with  the 
will  of  God ;  to  promote  the  survival  of  the  human 
species  on  this  planet,  —  are  so  many  tests,  each  of 
which  has  been  maintained  by  somebody  to  consti- 
tute the  essence  of  all  good  things  or  actions  so  far 
as  they  are  good. 

No  one  of  the  measures  that  have  been  actually 
proposed  has,  however,  given  general  satisfaction. 
Some  are  obviously  not  universally  present  in  all 
cases,  —  e.  g.,  the  character  of  harming  no  one,  or 
that  of  following  a  universal  law ;  for  the  best  course 
is  often  cruel ;  and  many  acts  are  reckoned  good  on 
the  sole  condition  that  they  be  exceptions,  and  serve 
not  as  examples  of  a  universal  law.  Other  charac- 


The  Moral  Philosopher  and  Moral  Life.    201 

ters,  such  as  following  the  will  of  God,  are  unascer- 
tainable  and  vague.  Others  again,  like  survival,  are 
quite  indeterminate  in  their  consequences,  and  leave 
us  in  the  lurch  where  we  most  need  their  help :  a 
philosopher  of  the  Sioux  Nation,  for  example,  will 
be  certain  to  use  the  survival-criterion  in  a  very  dif- 
ferent way  from  ourselves.  The  best,  on  the  whole, 
of  these  marks  and  measures  of  goodness  seems  to  be 
the  capacity  to  bring  happiness.  But  in  order  not  to 
break  down  fatally,  this  test  must  be  taken  to  cover 
innumerable  acts  and  impulses  that  never  aim  at  hap- 
piness ;  so  that,  after  all,  in  seeking  for  a  universal 
principle  we  inevitably  are  carried  onward  to  the 
most  universal  principle,  —  that  the  essence  of  good  is 
simply  to  satisfy  demand.  The  demand  may  be  for 
anything  under  the  sun.  There  is  really  no  more 
ground  for  supposing  that  all  our  demands  can  be 
accounted  for  by  one  universal  underlying  kind  of 
motive  than  there  is  ground  for  supposing  that  all 
physical  phenomena  are  cases  of  a  single  law.  The 
elementary  forces  in  ethics  are  probably  as  plural  as 
those  of  physics  are.  The  various  ideals  have  no 
common  character  apart  from  the  fact  that  they  are 
ideals.  No  single  abstract  principle  can  be  so  used 
as  to  yield  to  the  philosopher  anything  like  a  scien- 
tifically accurate  and  genuinely  useful  casuistic  scale. 

A  look  at  another  peculiarity  of  the  ethical  universe, 
as  we  find  it,  wiU  still  further  show  us  the  philoso- 
pher's perplexities.  As  a  purely  theoretic  problem, 
namely,  the  casuistic  question  would  hardly  ever 
come  up  at  all.  If  the  ethical  philosopher  were  only 
asking  after  the  best  imaginable  system  of  goods  he 
would  indeed  have  an  easy  task ;  for  all  demands  as 


2O2          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

such  are  primd  facie  respectable,  and  the  best  simply 
imaginary  world  would  be  one  in  which  every  demand 
was  gratified  as  soon  as  made.  Such  a  world  would, 
however,  have  to  have  a  physical  constitution  entirely 
different  from  that  of  the  one  which  we  inhabit.  It 
would  need  not  only  a  space,  but  a  time,  '  of  «-di- 
mensions,'  to  include  all  the  acts  and  experiences 
incompatible  with  one  another  here  below,  which 
would  then  go  on  in  conjunction,  —  such  as  spending 
our  money,  yet  growing  rich ;  taking  our  holiday,  yet 
getting  ahead  with  our  work;  shooting  and  fishing, 
yet  doing  no  hurt  to  the  beasts;  gaining  no  end  of 
experience,  yet  keeping  our  youthful  freshness  of 
heart;  and  the  like.  There  can  be  no  question  that 
such  a  system  of  things,  however  brought  about, 
would  be  the  absolutely  ideal  system ;  and  that  if  a 
philosopher  could  create  universes  a  priori,  and  pro- 
vide all  the  mechanical  conditions,  that  is  the  sort  of 
universe  which  he  should  unhesitatingly  create. 

But  this  world  of  ours  is  made  on  an  entirely  diffe- 
rent pattern,  and  the  casuistic  question  here  is  most 
tragically  practical.  The  actually  possible  in  this 
world  is  vastly  narrower  than  all  that  is  demanded ; 
and  there  is  always  a  pinch  between  the  ideal  and  the 
actual  which  can  only  be  got  through  by  leaving  part 
of  the  ideal  behind.  There  is  hardly  a  good  which 
we  can  imagine  except  as  competing  for  the  pos- 
session of  the  same  bit  of  space  and  time  with  some 
other  imagined  good.  Every  end  of  desire  that  pre- 
sents itself  appears  exclusive  of  some  other  end  of 
desire.  Shall  a  man  drink  and  smoke,  or  keep  his 
nerves  in  condition  ?  —  he  cannot  do  both.  Shall  he 
follow  his  fancy  for  Amelia,  or  for  Henrietta?  —  both 
cannot  be  the  choice  of  his  heart.  Shall  he  have  the 


The  Moral  Philosopher  and  Moral  Life.     203 

dear  old  Republican  party,  or  a  spirit  of  unsophistica- 
tion  in  public  affairs?  —  he  cannot  have  both,  etc. 
So  that  the  ethical  philosopher's  demand  for  the  right 
scale  of  subordination  in  ideals  is  the  fruit  of  an  alto- 
gether practical  need.  Some  part  of  the  ideal  must 
be  butchered,  and  he  needs  to  know  which  part.  It 
is  a  tragic  situation,  and  no  mere  speculative  conun- 
drum, with  which  he  has  to  deal. 

Now  we  are  blinded  to  the  real  difficulty  of  the 
philosopher's  task  by  the  fact  that  we  are  born  into  a 
society  whose  ideals  are  largely  ordered  already.  If 
we  follow  the  ideal  which  is  conventionally  highest, 
the  others  which  we  butcher  either  die  and  do  not  re- 
turn to  haunt  us ;  or  if  they  come  back  and  accuse  us 
of  murder,  every  one  applauds  us  for  turning  to  them 
a  deaf  ear.  In  other  words,  our  environment  encour- 
ages us  not  to  be  philosophers  but  partisans.  The 
philosopher,  however,  cannot,  so  long  as  he  clings  to 
his  own  ideal  of  objectivity,  rule  out  any  ideal  from 
being  heard.  He  is  confident,  and  rightly  confident, 
that  the  simple  taking  counsel  of  his  own  intuitive 
preferences  would  be  certain  to  end  in  a  mutilation  of 
the  fulness  of  the  truth.  The  poet  Heine  is  said  to 
have  written  '  Bunsen '  in  the  place  of  '  Gott '  in  his 
copy  of  that  author's  work  entitled  "  God  in  His- 
tory," so  as  to  make  it  read  '  Bunsen  in  der  Geschichte.' 
Now,  with  no  disrespect  to  the  good  and  learned 
Baron,  is  it  not  safe  to  say  that  any  single  philos- 
opher, however  wide  his  sympathies,  must  be  just 
such  a  Bunsen  in  der  Geschichte  of  the  moral  world, 
so  soon  as  he  attempts  to  put  his  own  ideas  of  order 
into  that  howling  mob  of  desires,  each  struggling  to 
get  breathing-room  for  the  ideal  to  which  it  clings? 
The  very  best  of  men  must  not  only  be  insensible,  but 


204         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

be  ludicrously  and  peculiarly  insensible,  to  many 
goods.  As  a  militant,  fighting  free-handed  that  the 
goods  to  which  he  is  sensible  may  not  be  submerged 
and  lost  from  out  of  life,  the  philosopher,  like  every 
other  human  being,  is  in  a  natural  position.  But 
think  of  Zeno  and  of  Epicurus,  think  of  Calvin  and  of 
Paley,  think  of  Kant  and  Schopenhauer,  of  Herbert 
Spencer  and  John  Henry  Newman,  no  longer  as  one- 
sided champions  of  special  ideals,  but  as  schoolmas- 
ters deciding  what  all  must  think,  —  and  what  more 
grotesque  topic  could  a  satirist  wish  for  on  which  to 
exercise  his  pen?  The  fabled  attempt  of  Mrs.  Part- 
ington  to  arrest  the  rising  tide  of  the  North  Atlantic 
with  her  broom  was  a  reasonable  spectacle  compared 
with  their  effort  to  substitute  the  content  of  their 
clean-shaven  systems  for  that  exuberant  mass  of 
goods  with  which  all  human  nature  is  in  travail,  and 
groaning  to  bring  to  the  light  of  day.  Think,  further- 
more, of  such  individual  moralists,  no  longer  as  mere 
schoolmasters,  but  as  pontiffs  armed  with  the  tempo- 
ral power,  and  having  authority  in  every  concrete 
case  of  conflict  to  order  which  good  shall  be  butch- 
ered and  which  shall  be  suffered  to  survive,  — and  the 
notion  really  turns  one  pale.  All  one's  slumbering 
revolutionary  instincts  waken  at  the  thought  of  any 
single  moralist  wielding  such  powers  of  life  and  death. 
Better  chaos  forever  than  an  order  based  on  any 
closet-philosopher's  rule,  even  though  he  were  the 
most  enlightened  possible  member  of  his  tribe.  No  ! 
if  the  philosopher  is  to  keep  his  judicial  position,  he 
must  never  become  one  of  the  parties  to  the  fray. 

What  can  he  do,  then,  it  will  now  be  asked,  except 
to  fall  back  on  scepticism  and  give  up  the  notion  of 
being  a  philosopher  at  all? 


The  Moral  Philosopher  and  Moral  Life.    205 

But  do  we  not  already  see  a  perfectly  definite  path 
of  escape  which  is  open  to  him  just  because  he  is  a 
philosopher,  and  not  the  champion  of  one  particular 
ideal?  Since  everything  which  is  demanded  is  by 
that  fact  a  good,  must  not  the  guiding  principle  for 
ethical  philosophy  (since  all  demands  conjointly  can- 
not be  satisfied  in  this  poor  world)  be  simply  to  sat- 
isfy at  all  times  as  many  demands  as  we  can?  That 
act  must  be  the  best  act,  accordingly,  which  makes 
for  the  best  whole,  in  the  sense  of  awakening  the  least 
sum  of  dissatisfactions.  In  the  casuistic  scale,  there- 
fore, those  ideals  must  be  written  highest  which  pre- 
vail at  the  least  cost,  or  by  whose  realization  the  least 
possible  number  of  other  ideals  are  destroyed.  Since 
victory  and  defeat  there  must  be,  the  victory  to  be 
philosophically  prayed  for  is  that  of  the  more  inclu- 
sive side,  —  of  the  side  which  even  in  the  hour  of 
triumph  will  to  some  degree  do  justice  to  the  ideals 
in  which  the  vanquished  party's  interests  lay.  The 
course  of  history  is  nothing  but  the  story  of  men's 
struggles  from  generation  to  generation  to  find  the 
more  and  more  inclusive  order.  Invent  some  manner 
of  realizing  your  own  ideals  which  will  also  satisfy  the 
alien  demands,  —  that  and  that  only  is  the  path  of 
peace  !  Following  this  path,  society  has  shaken  itself 
into  one  sort  of  relative  equilibrium  after  another  by  a 
series  of  social  discoveries  quite  analogous  to  those  of 
science.  Polyandry  and  polygamy  and  slavery,  pri- 
vate warfare  and  liberty  to  kill,  judicial  torture  and 
arbitrary  royal  power  have  slowly  succumbed  to  act- 
ually aroused  complaints ;  and  though  some  one's 
ideals  are  unquestionably  the  worse  off  for  each  im- 
provement, yet  a  vastly  greater  total  number  of  them 
find  shelter  in  our  civilized  society  than  in  the  older 


206          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

savage  ways.  So  far  then,  and  up  to  date,  the  casuis- 
tic scale  is  made  for  the  philosopher  already  far  bet- 
ter than  he  can  ever  make  it  for  himself.  An  experi- 
ment of  the  most  searching  kind  has  proved  that  the 
laws  and  usages  of  the  land  are  what  yield  the  maxi- 
mum of  satisfaction  to  the  thinkers  taken  all  together. 
The  presumption  in  cases  of  conflict  must  always  be 
in  favor  of  the  conventionally  recognized  good.  The 
philosopher  must  be  a  conservative,  and  in  the  con- 
struction of  his  casuistic  scale  must  put  the  things  most 
in  accordance  with  the  customs  of  the  community  on 
top. 

And  yet  if  he  be  a  true  philosopher  he  must  see 
that  there  is  nothing  final  in  any  actually  given  equi- 
librium of  human  ideals,  but  that,  as  our  present 
laws  and  customs  have  fought  and  conquered  other 
past  ones,  so  they  will  in  their  turn  be  overthrown 
by  any  newly  discovered  order  which  will  hush  up 
the  complaints  that  they  still  give  rise  to,  without 
producing  others  louder  still.  "  Rules  are  made  for 
man,  not  man  for  rules,"  —  that  one  sentence  is 
enough  to  immortalize  Green's  Prolegomena  to 
Ethics.  And  although  a  man  always  risks  much 
when  he  breaks  away  from  established  rules  and 
strives  to  realize  a  larger  ideal  whole  than  they  per- 
mit, yet  the  philosopher  must  allow  that  it  is  at 
all  times  open  to  any  one  to  make  the  experiment, 
provided  he  fear  not  to  stake  his  life  and  character 
upon  the  throw.  The  pinch  is  always  here.  Pent  in 
under  every  system  of  moral  rules  are  innumerable 
persons  whom  it  weighs  upon,  and  goods  which  it 
represses ;  and  these  are  always  rumbling  and  grum- 
bling in  the  background,  and  ready  for  any  issue  by 
which  they  may  get  free.  See  the  abuses  which  the 


The  Moral  Philosopher  and  Moral  Life.     207 

institution  of  private  property  covers,  so  that  even 
to-day  it  is  shamelessly  asserted  among  us  that  one 
of  the  prime  functions  of  the  national  government  is 
to  help  the  adroiter  citizens  to  grow  rich.  See  the 
unnamed  and  unnamable  sorrows  which  the  tyranny, 
on  the  whole  so  beneficent,  of  the  marriage-institu- 
tion brings  to  so  many,  both  of  the  married  and  the 
unwed.  See  the  wholesale  loss  of  opportunity  under 
our  regime  of  so-called  equality  and  industrialism, 
with  the  drummer  and  the  counter-jumper  in  the 
saddle,  for  so  many  faculties  and  graces  which  could 
flourish  in  the  feudal  world.  See  our  kindliness  for 
the  humble  and  the  outcast,  how  it  wars  with  that 
stern  weeding-out  which  until  now  has  been  the 
condition  of  every  perfection  in  the  breed.  See 
everywhere  the  struggle  and  the  squeeze ;  and  ever- 
lastingly the  problem  how  to  make  them  less.  The 
anarchists,  nihilists,  and  free-lovers ;  the  free-silver- 
ites,  socialists,  and  single-tax  men ;  the  free-traders 
and  civil-service  reformers;  the  prohibitionists  and 
anti-vivisectionists ;  the  radical  darwinians  with  their 
idea  of  the  suppression  of  the  weak,  —  these  and 
all  the  conservative  sentiments  of  society  arrayed 
against  them,  are  simply  deciding  through  actual 
experiment  by  what  sort  of  conduct  the  maximum 
amount  of  good  can  be  gained  and  kept  in  this  world. 
These  experiments  are  to  be  judged,  not  a  priori, 
but  by  actually  finding,  after  the  fact  of  their  making, 
how  much  more  outcry  or  how  much  appeasement 
comes  about.  What  closet-solutions  can  possibly 
anticipate  the  result  of  trials  made  on  such  a  scale  ? 
Or  what  can  any  superficial  theorist's  judgment  be 
worth,  in  a  world  where  every  one  of  hundreds  of 
ideals  has  its  special  champion  already  provided 


2o8          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

in  the  shape  of  some  genius  expressly  born  to  feel 
it,  and  to  fight  to  death  in  its  behalf?  The  pure 
philosopher  can  only  follow  the  windings  of  the 
spectacle,  confident  that  the  line  of  least  resistance 
will  always  be  towards  the  richer  and  the  more 
inclusive  arrangement,  and  that  by  one  tack  after 
another  some  approach  to  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
is  incessantly  made. 

IV. 

All  this  amounts  to  saying  that,  so  far  as  the  casu- 
istic question  goes,  ethical  science  is  just  like  phy- 
sical science,  and  instead  of  being  deducible  all  at 
once  from  abstract  principles,  must  simply  bide  its 
time,  and  be  ready  to  revise  its  conclusions  from  day 
to  day.  The  presumption  of  course,  in  both  sciences, 
always  is  that  the  vulgarly  accepted  opinions  are 
true,  and  the  right  casuistic  order  that  which  public 
opinion  believes  in;  and  surely  it  would  be  folly 
quite  as  great,  in  most  of  us,  to  strike  out  independ- 
ently and  to  aim  at  originality  in  ethics  as  in  physics. 
Every  now  and  then,  however,  some  one  is  born 
with  the  right  to  be  original,  and  his  revolutionary 
thought  or  action  may  bear  prosperous  fruit.  He 
may  replace  old  '  laws  of  nature '  by  better  ones ; 
he  may,  by  breaking  old  moral  rules  in  a  certain 
place,  bring  in  a  total  condition  of  things  more  ideal 
than  would  have  followed  had  the  rules  been  kept. 

On  the  whole,  then,  we  must  conclude  that  no 
philosophy  of  ethics  is  possible  in  the  old-fashioned 
absolute  sense  of  the  term.  Everywhere  the  ethical 
philosopher  must  wait  on  facts.  The  thinkers  who 
create  the  ideals  come  he  knows  not  whence,  their 
sensibilities  are  evolved  he  knows  not  how ;  and  the 


The  Moral  Philosopher  and  Moral  Life.    209 

question  as  to  which  of  two  conflicting  ideals  will 
give  the  best  universe  then  and  there,  can  be  answered 
by  him  only  through  the  aid  of  the  experience  of  other 
men.     I  said  some  time  ago,  in  treating  of  the  '  first ' 
question,  that  the  intuitional  moralists  deserve  credit 
for  keeping  most  clearly  to  the  psychological  facts. 
They  do  much  to  spoil  this  merit  on  the  whole,  how- 
ever, by  mixing  with  it  that  dogmatic  temper  which, 
by  absolute  distinctions  and  unconditional  '  thou  shalt 
nots,"  changes  a  growing,  elastic,  and  continuous  life 
into  a  superstitious  system  of  relics  and  dead  bones. 
In   point   of  fact,  there   are   no  absolute   evils,  and 
there   are    no    non-moral    goods ;     and    the    highest 
ethical   life  —  however   few  may  be   called   to   bear 
its  burdens  —  consists  at  all  times  in  the  breaking  of 
rules  which  have  grown  too  narrow  for  the  actual 
case.     There  is  but  one  unconditional  commandment, 
which  is  that  we  should  seek  incessantly,  with  fear 
and   trembling,  so  to   vote  and  to  act  as  to   bring 
about  the  very  largest  total  universe  of  good  which 
we  can  see.     Abstract   rules   indeed  can   help;   but 
they   help   the   less  in  proportion  as  our  intuitions 
are  more  piercing,  and  our  vocation  is  the  stronger 
for   the   moral   life.     For   every  real  dilemma  is  in 
literal   strictness  a  unique  situation;  and  the  exact 
combination    of    ideals    realized    and    ideals    disap- 
pointed which  each  decision  creates  is  always  a  uni- 
verse without  a  precedent,  and  for  which  no  adequate 
previous   rule   exists.      The  philosopher,  then,    qud 
philosopher,  is  no  better  able  to  determine  the  best 
universe  in  the  concrete  emergency  than  other  men. 
He   sees,  indeed,  somewhat   better  than  most  men 
what  the  question  always  is,  —  not  a  question  of  this 
good  or  that  good  simply  taken,  but  of  the  two  total 

14 


2io         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

universes  with  which  these  goods  respectively  belong. 
He  knows  that  he  must  vote  always  for  the  richer 
universe,  for  the  good  which  seems  most  organizable, 
most  fit  to  enter  into  complex  combinations,  most 
apt  to  be  a  member  of  a  more  inclusive  whole.  But 
which  particular  universe  this  is  he  cannot  know  for 
certain  in  advance ;  he  only  knows  that  if  he  makes 
a  bad  mistake  the  cries  of  the  wounded  will  soon 
inform  him  of  the  fact.  In  all  this  the  philosopher  is 
just  like  the  rest  of  us  non-philosophers,  so  far  as  we 
are  just  and  sympathetic  instinctively,  and  so  far  as 
we  are  open  to  the  voice  of  complaint.  His  function 
is  in  fact  indistinguishable  from  that  of  the  best  kind 
of  statesman  at  the  present  day.  His  books  upon 
ethics,  therefore,  so  far  as  they  truly  touch  the  moral 
life,  must  more  and  more  ally  themselves  with  a 
literature  which  is  confessedly  tentative  and  sugges- 
tive rather  than  dogmatic,  —  I  mean  with  novels  and 
dramas  of  the  deeper  sort,  with  sermons,  with  books 
on  statecraft  and  philanthropy  and  social  and  eco- 
nomical reform.  Treated  in  this  way  ethical  treatises 
may  be  voluminous  and  luminous  as  well ;  but  they 
never  can  be  final,  except  in  their  abstractest  and 
vaguest  features;  and  they  must  more  and  more 
abandon  the  old-fashioned,  clear-cut,  and  would-be 
'  scientific  '  form. 

V. 

The  chief  of  all  the  reasons  why  concrete  ethics 
cannot  be  final  is  that  they  have  to  wait  on  meta- 
physical and  theological  beliefs.  I  said  some  time 
back  that  real  ethical  relations  existed  in  a  purely 
human  world.  They  would  exist  even  in  what  we 
called  a  moral  solitude  if  the  thinker  had  various 


The  Moral  Philosopher  and  Moral  Life.    211 

ideals  which  took  hold  of  him  in  turn.  His  self  of 
one  day  would  make  demands  on  his  self  of  another ; 
and  some  of  the  demands  might  be  urgent  and  tyran- 
nical, while  others  were  gentle  and  easily  put  aside. 
We  call  the  tyrannical  demands  imperatives.  If  we 
ignore  these  we  do  not  hear  the  last  of  it.  The  good 
which  we  have  wounded  returns  to  plague  us  with 
interminable  crops  of  consequential  damages,  com- 
punctions, and  regrets.  Obligation  can  thus  exist 
inside  a  single  thinker's  consciousness ;  and  perfect 
peace  can  abide  with  him  only  so  far  as  he  lives 
according  to  some  sort  of  a  casuistic  scale  which 
keeps  his  more  imperative  goods  on  top.  It  is  the 
nature  of  these  goods  to  be  cruel  to  their  rivals. 
Nothing  shall  avail  when  weighed  in  the  balance 
against  them.  They  call  out  all  the  mercilessness  in 
our  disposition,  and  do  not  easily  forgive  us  if  we  are 
so  soft-hearted  as  to  shrink  from  sacrifice  in  their 
behalf. 

The  deepest  difference,  practically,  in  the  moral 
life  of  man  is  the  difference  between  the  easy-going 
and  the  strenuous  mood.  When  in  the  easy-going 
mood  the  shrinking  from  present  ill  is  our  ruling  con- 
sideration. The  strenuous  mood,  on  the  contrary, 
makes  us  quite  indifferent  to  present  ill,  if  only  the 
greater  ideal  be  attained.  The  capacity  for  the  stre- 
nuous mood  probably  lies  slumbering  in  every  man, 
but  it  has  more  difficulty  in  some  than  in  others  in 
waking  up.  It  needs  the  wilder  passions  to  arouse  it, 
the  big  fears,  loves,  and  indignations ;  or  else  the 
deeply  penetrating  appeal  of  some  one  of  the  higher 
fidelities,  like  justice,  truth,  or  freedom.  Strong  relief 
is  a  necessity  of  its  vision ;  and  a  world  where  all  the 
mountains  are  brought  down  and  all  the  valleys  are 


212         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

exalted  is  no  congenial  place  for  its  habitation.  This 
is  why  in  a  solitary  thinker  this  mood  might  slumber 
on  forever  without  waking.  His  various  ideals,  known 
to  him  to  be  mere  preferences  of  his  own,  are  too 
nearly  of  the  same  denominational  value:  he  can 
play  fast  or  loose  with  them  at  will.  This  too  is  why, 
in  a  merely  human  world  without  a  God,  the  appeal 
to  our  moral  energy  falls  short  of  its  maximal  stim- 
ulating power.  Life,  to  be  sure,  is  even  in  such  a 
world  a  genuinely  ethical  symphony ;  but  it  is  played 
in  the  compass  of  a  couple  of  poor  octaves,  and  the 
infinite  scale  of  values  fails  to  open  up.  Many  of  us, 
indeed,  —  like  Sir  James  Stephen  in  those  eloquent 
'  Essays  by  a  Barrister,'  —  would  openly  laugh  at  the 
very  idea  of  the  strenuous  mood  being  awakened  in 
us  by  those  claims  of  remote  posterity  which  consti- 
tute the  last  appeal  of  the  religion  of  humanity.  We 
do  not  love  these  men  of  the  future  keenly  enough ; 
and  we  love  them  perhaps  the  less  the  more  we  hear 
of  their  evolutionized  perfection,  their  high  average 
longevity  and  education,  their  freedom  from  war  and 
crime,  their  relative  immunity  from  pain  and  zymotic 
disease,  and  all  their  other  negative  superiorities. 
This  is  all  too  finite,  we  say;  we  see  too  well  the 
vacuum  beyond.  It  lacks  the  note  of  infinitude  and 
mystery,  and  may  all  be  dealt  with  in  the  don't-care 
mood.  No  need  of  agonizing  ourselves  or  making 
others  agonize  for  these  good  creatures  just  at  present. 
When,  however,  we  believe  that  a  God  is  there,  and 
that  he  is  one  of  the  claimants,  the  infinite  perspective 
opens  out.  The  scale  of  the  symphony  is  incalculably 
prolonged.  The  more  imperative  ideals  now  begin 
to  speak  with  an  altogether  new  objectivity  and  sig- 
nificance, and  to  utter  the  penetrating,  shattering, 


The  Moral  Philosopher  and  Moral  Life.    213 

tragically  challenging  note  of  appeal.  They  ring  out 
like  the  call  of  Victor  Hugo's  alpine  eagle,  "  qui  parle 
au  precipice  et  que  le  gouffre  entend,"  and  the  stre- 
nuous mood  awakens  at  the  sound.  It  saith  among 
the  trumpets,  ha,  ha !  it  smelleth  the  battle  afar  off, 
the  thunder  of  the  captains  and  the  shouting.  Its 
blood  is  up ;  and  cruelty  to  the  lesser  claims,  so  far 
from  being  a  deterrent  element,  does  but  add  to  the 
stern  joy  with  which  it  leaps  to  answer  to  the  greater. 
All  through  history,  in  the  periodical  conflicts  of 
puritanism  with  the  don't-care  temper,  we  see  the 
antagonism  of  the  strenuous  and  genial  moods,  and 
the  contrast  between  the  ethics  of  infinite  and  myste- 
rious obligation  from  on  high,  and  those  of  prudence 
and  the  satisfaction  of  merely  finite  need. 

The  capacity  of  the  strenuous  mood  lies  so  deep 
down  among  our  natural  human  possibilities  that  even 
if  there  were  no  metaphysical  or  traditional  grounds 
for  believing  in  a  God,  men  would  postulate  one  sim- 
ply as  a  pretext  for  living  hard,  and  getting  out  of  the 
game  of  existence  its  keenest  possibilities  of  zest. 
Our  attitude  towards  concrete  evils  is  entirely  differ- 
ent in  a  world  where  we  believe  there  are  none  but 
finite  demanders,  from  what  it  is  in  one  where  we 
joyously  face  tragedy  for  an  infinite  demander's  sake. 
Every  sort  of  energy  and  endurance,  of  courage  and 
capacity  for  handling  life's  evils,  is  set  free  in  those 
who  have  religious  faith.  For  this  reason  the  strenu- 
ous type  of  character  will  on  the  battle-field  of  human 
history  always  outwear  the  easy-going  type,  and  reli- 
gion will  drive  irreligion  to  the  wall. 

It  would  seem,  too,  —  and  this  is  my  final  conclu- 
sion, —  that  the  stable  and  systematic  moral  universe 


214          Essays  in   Popular  Philosophy. 

for  which  the  ethical  philosopher  asks  is  fully  possible 
only  in  a  world  where  there  is  a  divine  thinker  with 
all-enveloping  demands.  If  such  a  thinker  existed, 
his  way  of  subordinating  the  demands  to  one  another 
would  be  the  finally  valid  casuistic  scale ;  his  claims 
would  be  the  most  appealing ;  his  ideal  universe  would 
be  the  most  inclusive  realizable  whole.  If  he  now 
exist,  then  actualized  in  his  thought  already  must  be 
that  ethical  philosophy  which  we  seek  as  the  pat- 
tern which  our  own  must  evermore  approach.1  In 
the  interests  of  our  own  ideal  of  systematically  unified 
moral  truth,  therefore,  we,  as  would-be  philosophers, 
must  postulate  a  divine  thinker,  and  pray  for  the 
victory  of  the  religious  cause.  Meanwhile,  exactly 
what  the  thought  of  the  infinite  thinker  may  be  is 
hidden  from  us  even.were  we  sure  of  his  existence ; 
so  that  our  postulation  of  him  after  all  serves  only  to 
let  loose  in  us  the  strenuous  mood.  But  this  is  what 
it  does  in  all  men,  even  those  who  have  no  interest  in 
philosophy.  The  ethical  philosopher,  therefore,  when- 
ever he  ventures  to  say  which  course  of  action  is  the 
best,  is  on  no  essentially  different  level  from  the  com- 
mon man.  "  See,  I  have  set  before  thee  this  day  life 
and  good,  and  death  and  evil;  therefore,  choose  life 
that  thou  and  thy  seed  may  live,"  —  when  this  challenge 
comes  to  us,  it  is  simply  our  total  character  and  per- 
sonal genius  that  are  on  trial ;  and  if  we  invoke  any 
so-called  philosophy,  our  choice  and  use  of  that  also 
are  but  revelations  of  our  personal  aptitude  or  inca- 
pacity for  moral  life.  From  this  unsparing  practical 
ordeal  no  professor's  lectures  and  no  array  of  books 

1  All  this  is  set  forth  with  great  freshness  and  force  in  the  work 
of  my  colleague,  Professor  Josiah  Royce :  "  The  Religious  Aspect  of 
Philosophy."  Boston,  1885. 


The  Moral  Philosopher  and  Moral  Life.     215 

can  save  us.  The  solving  word,  for  the  learned  and 
the  unlearned  man  alike,  lies  in  the  last  resort  in  the 
dumb  willingnesses  and  unwillingnesses  of  their  inte- 
rior characters,  and  nowhere  else.  It  is  not  in  heaven, 
neither  is  it  beyond  the  sea;  but  the  word  is  very 
nigh  unto  thee,  in  thy  mouth  and  in  thy  heart,  that 
thou  mayest  do  it. 


u6         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 


GREAT  MEN  AND  THEIR  ENVIRONMENT.1 

A  REMARKABLE  parallel,  which  I  think  has 
never  been  noticed,  obtains  between  the  facts  of 
social  evolution  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  zoological 
evolution  as  expounded  by  Mr.  Darwin  on  the  other. 
It  will  be  best  to  prepare  the  ground  for  my  thesis 
by  a  few  very  general  remarks  on  the  method  of  get- 
ting at  scientific  truth.  It  is  a  common  platitude  that 
a  complete  acquaintance  with  any  one  thing,  however 
small,  would  require  a  knowledge  of  the  entire  uni- 
verse. Not  a  sparrow  falls  to  the  ground  but  some 
of  the  remote  conditions  of  his  fall  are  to  be  found 
in  the  milky  way,  in  our  federal  constitution,  or  in 
the  early  history  of  Europe.  That  is  to  say,  alter  the 
milky  way,  alter  the  federal  constitution,  alter  the 
facts  of  our  barbarian  ancestry,  and  the  universe 
would  so  far  be  a  different  universe  from  what  it  now 
is.  One  fact  involved  in  the  difference  might  be  that 
the  particular  little  street-boy  who  threw  the  stone 
which  brought  down  the  sparrow  might  not  find  him- 
self opposite  the  sparrow  at  that  particular  moment ; 
or,  finding  himself  there,  he  might  not  be  in  that  par- 
ticular serene  and  disengaged  mood  of  mind  which 
expressed  itself  in  throwing  the  stone.  But,  true  as 
all  this  is,  it  would  be  very  foolish  for  any  one  who 

1  A  lecture  before  the  Harvard   Natural  History  Society;   pub 
lished  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  October,  1880. 


Great  Men  and  their  Environment.      217 

was  inquiring  the  cause  of  the  sparrow's  fall  to  over- 
look the  boy  as  too  personal,  proximate,  and  so  to 
speak  anthropomorphic  an  agent,  and  to  say  that  the 
true  cause  is  the  federal  constitution,  the  westward 
migration  of  the  Celtic  race,  or  the  structure  of  the 
milky  way.  If  we  proceeded  gn  that  method,  we 
might  say  with  perfect  legitimacy  that  a  friend  of 
ours,  who  had  slipped  on  the  ice  upon  his  door-step 
and  cracked  his  skull,  some  months  after  dining  with 
thirteen  at  the  table,  died  because  of  that  ominous 
feast.  I  know,  in  fact,  one  such  instance;  and  I 
might,  if  I  chose,  contend  with  perfect  logical  propri- 
ety that  the  slip  on  the  ice  was  no  real  accident. 
"There  are  no  accidents,"  I  might  say,  "for  science. 
The  whole  history  of  the  world  converged  to  produce 
that  slip.  If  anything  had  been  left  out,  the  slip 
would  not  have  occurred  just  there  and  then.  To  say 
it  would  is  to  deny  the  relations  of  cause  and  effect 
throughout  the  universe.  The  real  cause  of  the  death 
was  not  the  slip,  but  the  conditions  which  engendered 
the  slip,  —  and  among  them  his  having  sat  at  a  table, 
six  months  previous,  one  among  thirteen.  That  is 
truly  the  reason  why  he  died  within  the  year." 

It  will  soon  be  seen  whose  arguments  I  am,  in  form, 
reproducing  here.  I  would  fain  lay  down  the  truth 
without  polemics  or  recrimination.  But  unfortunately 
we  never  fully  grasp  the  import  of  any  true  statement 
until  we  have  a  clear  notion  of  what  the  opposite  un- 
true statement  would  be.  The  error  is  needed  to  set 
off  the  truth,  much  as  a  dark  background  is  required 
for  exhibiting  the  brightness  of  a  picture.  And  the 
error  which  I  am  going  to  use  as  a  foil  to  set  .off  what 
seems  to  me  the  truth  of  my  own  statements  is  con- 
tained in  the  philosophy  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  and 


21 8          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

his  disciples.  Our  problem  is,  What  are  the  causes 
that  make  communities  change  from  generation  to 
generation,  — that  make  the  England  of  Queen  Anne 
so  different  from  the  England  of  Elizabeth,  the  Har- 
vard College  of  to-day  so  different  from  that  of  thirty 
years  ago? 

I  shall  reply  to  this  problem,  The  difference  is  due 
to  the  accumulated  influences  of  individuals,  of  their 
examples,  their  initiatives,  and  their  decisions.  The 
Spencerian  school  replies,  The  changes  are  irrespect- 
ive of  persons,  and  independent  of  individual  control. 
They  are  due  to  the  environment,  to  the  circum- 
stances, the  physical  geography,  the  ancestral  condi- 
tions, the  increasing  experience  of  outer  relations; 
to  everything,  in  fact,  except  the  Grants  and  the  Bis- 
marcks,  the  Joneses  and  the  Smiths. 

Now,  I  say  that  these  theorizers  are  guilty  of  pre- 
cisely the  same  fallacy  as  he  who  should  ascribe  the 
death  of  his  friend  to  the  dinner  with  thirteen,  or  the 
fall  of  the  sparrow  to  the  milky  way.  Like  the  dog 
in  the  fable,  who  drops  his  real  bone  to  snatch  at  its 
image,  they  drop  the  real  causes  to  snatch  at  others, 
which  from  no  possible  human  point  of  view  are 
available  or  attainable.  Their  fallacy  is  a  practical 
one.  Let  us  see  where  it  lies.  Although  I  believe  in 
free-will  myself,  I  will  waive  that  belief  in  this  discus- 
sion, and  assume  with  the  Spencerians  the  predes- 
tination of  all  human  actions.  On  that  assumption  I 
gladly  allow  that  were  the  intelligence  investigating 
the  man's  or  the  sparrow's  death  omniscient  and  om- 
nipresent, able  to  take  in  the  whole  of  time  and  space 
at  a  single  glance,  there  would  not  be  the  slightest 
objection  to  the  milky  way  or  the  fatal  feast  being  in- 


Great  Men  and  their  Environment.     219 

voked  among  the  sought-for  causes.  Such  a  divine 
intelligence  would  see  instantaneously  all  the  infinite 
lines  of  convergence  towards  a  given  result,  and  it 
would,  moreover,  see  impartially:  it  would  see  the 
fatal  feast  to  be  as  much  a  condition  of  the  sparrow's 
death  as  of  the  man's ;  it  would  see  the  boy  with  the 
stone  to  be  as  much  a  condition  of  the  man's  fall  as 
of  the  sparrow's. 

The  human  mind,  however,  is  constituted  on  an 
entirely  different  plan.  It  has  no  such  power  of  uni- 
versal intuition.  Its  finiteness  obliges  it  to  see  but 
two  or  three  things  at  a  time.  If  it  wishes  to  take 
wider  sweeps  it  has  to  use  '  general  ideas,'  as  they  are 
called,  and  in  so  doing  to  drop  all  concrete  truths. 
Thus,  in  the  present  case,  if  we  as  men  wish  to  feel 
the  connection  between  the  milky  way  and  the  boy 
and  the  dinner  and  the  sparrow  and  the  man's  death, 
we  can  do  so  only  by  falling  back  on  the  enormous 
emptiness  of  what  is  called  an  abstract  proposition. 
We  must  say,  All  things  in  the  world  are  fatally  pre- 
determined, and  hang  together  in  the  adamantine  fix- 
ity of  a  system  of  natural  law.  But  in  the  vagueness 
of  this  vast  proposition  we  have  lost  all  the  concrete 
facts  and  links ;  and  in  all  practical  matters  the  con- 
crete links  are  the  only  things  of  importance.  The 
human  mind  is  essentially  partial.  It  can  be  efficient 
at  all  only  \>y  picking  out  what  to  attend  to,  and  ignor- 
ing everything  else,  —  by  narrowing  its  point  of  view. 
Otherwise,  what  little  strength  it  has  is  dispersed, 
and  it  loses  its  way  altogether.  Man  always  wants 
his 'curiosity  gratified  for  a  particular  purpose.  If,  in 
the  case  of  the  sparrow,  the  purpose  is  punishment,  it 
would  be  idiotic  to  wander  off  from  the  cats,  boys, 
and  other  possible  agencies  close  by  in  the  street,  to 


220         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

survey  the  early  Celts  and  the  milky  way:  the  boy 
would  meanwhile  escape.  And  if,  in  the  case  of  the 
unfortunate  man,  we  lose  ourselves  in  contemplation 
of  the  thirteen-at-table  mystery,  and  fail  to  notice  the 
ice  on  the  step  and  cover  it  with  ashes,  some  other 
poor  fellow,  who  never  dined  out  in  his  life,  may  slip 
on  it  in  coming  to  the  door,  and  fall  and  break  his 
head  too. 

It  is,  then,  a  necessity  laid  upon  us  as  human  be- 
ings to  limit  our  view.  In  mathematics  we  know  how 
this  method  of  ignoring  and  neglecting  quantities 
lying  outside  of  a  certain  range  has  been  adopted  in 
the  differential  calculus.  The  calculator  throws  out 
all  the  '  infinitesimals '  of  the  quantities  he  is  consi- 
dering. He  treats  them  (under  certain  rules)  as  if 
they  did  not  exist.  In  themselves  they  exist  perfectly 
all  the  while ;  but  they  are  as  if  they  did  not  exist  for 
the  purposes  of  his  calculation.  Just  so  an  astrono- 
mer, in  dealing  with  the  tidal  movements  of  the  ocean, 
takes  no  account  of  the  waves  made  by  the  wind,  or  by 
the  pressure  of  all  the  steamers  which  day  and  night 
are  moving  their  thousands  of  tons  upon  its  surface. 
Just  so  the  marksman,  in  sighting  his  rifle,  allows  for 
the  motion  of  the  wind,  but  not  for  the  equally  real 
motion  of  the  earth  and  solar  system.  Just  so  a 
business  man's  punctuality  may  overlook  an  error  of 
five  minutes,  while  a  physicist,  measuring  the  velocity 
of  light,  must  count  each  thousandth  of  a  second. 

There  are,  in  short,  different  cycles  of  operation  in 
nature ;  different  departments,  so  to  speak,  relatively 
independent  of  one  another,  so  that  what  goes  on  at 
any  moment  in  one  may  be  compatible  with  almost 
any  condition  of  things  at  the  same  time  in  the  next. 
The  mould  on  the  biscuit  in  the  store-room  of  a  man- 


Great  Men  and  their  Environment.      221 

of-war  vegetates  in  absolute  indifference  to  the  nation- 
ality of  the  flag,  the  direction  of  the  voyage,  the 
weather,  and  the  human  dramas  that  may  go  on  on 
board ;  and  a  mycologist  may  study  it  in  complete 
abstraction  from  all  these  larger  details.  Only  by  so 
studying  it,  in  fact,  is  there  any  chance  of  the  mental 
concentration  by  which  alone  he  may  hope  to  learn 
something  of  its  nature.  On  the  other  hand,  the  cap- 
tain who  in  manoeuvring  the  vessel  through  a  naval 
fight  should  think  it  necessary  to  bring  the  mouldy 
biscuit  into  his  calculations  would  very  likely  lose  the 
battle  by  reason  of  the  excessive  '  thoroughness  '  of 
his  mind. 

The  causes  which  operate  in  these  incommensura- 
ble cycles  are  connected  with  one  another  only  if  we 
take  the  whole  universe  into  account.  For  all  lesser 
points  of  view  it  is  lawful  —  nay,  more,  it  is  for  human 
wisdom  necessary  —  to  regard  them  as  disconnected 
and  irrelevant  to  one  another. 

And  this  brings  us  nearer  to  our  special  topic.  If 
we  look  at  an  animal  or  a  human  being,  distinguished 
from  the  rest  of  his  kind  by  the  possession  of  some 
extraordinary  peculiarity,  good  or  bad,  we  shall  be 
able  to  discriminate  between  the  causes  which  origi- 
nally produced  the  peculiarity  in  him  and  the  causes 
that  maintain  it  after  it  is  produced ;  and  we  shall 
see,  if  the  peculiarity  be  one  that  he  was  born  with, 
that  these  two  sets  of  causes  belong  to  two  such 
irrelevant  cycles.  It  was  the  triumphant  originality 
of  Darwin  to  see  this,  and  to  act  accordingly.  Sepa- 
rating the  causes  of  production  under  the  title  of 
'  tendencies  to  spontaneous  variation/  and  relegating 
them  to  a  physiological  cycle  which  he  forthwith 


222         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

agreed  to  ignore  altogether,1  he  confined  his  attention 
to  the  causes  of  preservation,  and  under  the  names  of 
natural  selection  and  sexual  selection  studied  them  ex- 
clusively as  functions  of  the  cycle  of  the  environment. 
Pre-Darwinian  philosophers  had  also  tried  to  estab- 
lish the  doctrine  of  descent  with  modification ;  but 
they  all  committed  the  blunder  of  clumping  the  two 
cycles  of  causation  into  one.  What  preserves  an 
animal  with  his  peculiarity,  if  it  be  a  useful  one,  they 
saw  to  be  the  nature  of  the  environment  to  which  the 
peculiarity  was  adjusted.  The  giraffe  with  his  peculiar 
neck  is  preserved  by  the  fact  that  there  are  in  his 
environment  tall  trees  whose  leaves  he  can  digest 
But  these  philosophers  went  further,  and  said  that  the 
presence  of  the  trees  not  only  maintained  an  animal 
with  a  long  neck  to  browse  upon  their  branches,  but 
also  produced  him.  They  made  his  neck  long  by 
the  constant  striving  they  aroused  in  him  to  reach  up 
to  them.  The  environment,  in  short,  was  supposed 
by  these  writers  to  mould  the  animal  by  a  kind  ol 
direct  pressure,  very  much  as  a  seal  presses  the  wax 
into  harmony  with  itself.  Numerous  instances  were 
given  of  the  way  in  which  this  goes  on  under  our  eyes. 
The  exercise  of  the  forge  makes  the  right  arm  strong, 
the  palm  grows  callous  to  the  oar,  the  mountain  aii 
distends  the  chest,  the  chased  fox  grows  cunning  and 
the  chased  bird  shy,  the  arctic  cold  stimulates  the 
animal  combustion,  and  so  forth.  Now  these  changes, 
of  which  many  more  examples  might  be  adduced,  are 

1  Darwin's  theory  of  pangenesis  is,  it  is  true,  an  attempt  to  account 
(among  other  things)  for  variation.  But  it  occupies  its  own  separate 
place,  and  its  author  no  more  invokes  the  environment  when  he 
talks  of  the  adhesions  of  gemmules  than  he  invokes  these  adhesions 
when  he  talks  of  the  relations  of  the  whole  animal  to  the  environ- 
ment Divide  et  impera  1 


Great  Men  and  their  Environment.      223 

at  present  distinguished  by  the  special  name  of  adap- 
tive changes.  Their  peculiarity  is  that  that  very 
feature  in  the  environment  to  which  the  animal's  na- 
ture grows  adjusted,  itself  produces  the  adjustment. 
The  '  inner  relation,'  to  use  Mr.  Spencer's  phrase, 
'  corresponds '  with  its  own  efficient  cause. 

Darwin's  first  achievement  was  to  show  the  utter 
insignificance  in  amount  of  these  changes  produced 
by  direct  adaptation,  the  immensely  greater  mass  of 
changes  being  produced  by  internal  molecular  acci- 
dents, of  which  we  know  nothing.  His  next  achieve- 
ment was  to  define  the  true  problem  with  which  we 
have  to  deal  when  we  study  the  effects  of  the  visible 
environment  on  the  animal.  That  problem  is  simply 
this  :  Is  the  environment  more  likely  to  preserve  or  to 
destroy  him,  on  account  of  this  or  that  peculiarity 
with  which  he  may  be  born?  In  giving  the  name  'of 
accidental  variations '  to  those  peculiarities  with  which 
an  animal  is  born,  Darwin  does  not  for  a  moment 
mean  to  suggest  that  they  are  not  the  fixed  outcome 
of  natural  law.  If  the  total  system  of  the  universe  be 
taken  into  account,  the  causes  of  these  variations  and 
the  visible  environment  which  preserves  or  destroys 
them,  undoubtedly  do,  in  some  remote  and  round- 
about way,  hang  together.  What  Darwin  means  is, 
that,  since  that  environment  is  a  perfectly  known 
thing,  and  its  relations  to  the  organism  in  the  way  of 
destruction  or  preservation  are  tangible  and  distinct, 
it  would  utterly  confuse  our  finite  understandings  and 
frustrate  our  hopes  of  science  to  mix  in  with  it  facts 
from  such  a  disparate  and  incommensurable  cycle  as 
that  in  which  the  variations  are  produced.  This  last 
cycle  is  that  of  occurrences  before  the  animal  is  born. 
It  is  the  cycle  of  influences  upon  ova  and  embryos ; 


224         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

in  which  lie  the  causes  that  tip  them  and  tilt  them 
towards  masculinity  or  femininity,  towards  strength 
or  weakness,  towards  health  or  disease,  and  towards 
divergence  from  the  parent  type.  What  are  the 
causes  there? 

In  the  first  place,  they  are  molecular  and  invisi- 
ble,—  inaccessible,  therefore,  to  direct  observation  of 
any  kind.  Secondly,  their  operations  are  compatible 
with  any  social,  political,  and  physical  conditions  of 
environment.  The  same  parents,  living  in  the  same 
environing  conditions,  may  at  one  birth  produce  a 
genius,  at  the  next  an  idiot  or  a  monster.  The  visi- 
ble external  conditions  are  therefore  not  direct  deter- 
minants of  this  cycle ;  and  the  more  we  consider  the 
matter,  the  more  we  are  forced  to  believe  that  two 
children  of  the  same  parents  are  made  to  differ  from 
each  other  by  causes  as  disproportionate  to  their  ulti- 
mate effects  as  is  the  famous  pebble  on  the  Rocky 
Mountain  crest,  which  separates  two  rain-drops,  to  the 
Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence  and  the  Pacific  Ocean  toward 
which  it  makes  them  severally  flow. 

The  great  mechanical  distinction  between  transitive 
forces  and  discharging  forces  is  nowhere  illustrated 
on  such  a  scale  as  in  physiology.  Almost  all  causes 
there  are  forces  of  detent,  which  operate  by  simply 
unlocking  energy  already  stored  up.  They  are  up- 
setters  of  unstable  equilibria,  and  the  resultant  effect 
depends  infinitely  more  on  the  nature  of  the  materials 
upset  than  on  that  of  the  particular  stimulus  which 
joggles  them  down.  Galvanic  work,  equal  to  unity, 
done  on  a  frog's  nerve  will  discharge  from  the  muscle 
to  which  the  nerve  belongs  mechanical  work  equal  to 
seventy  thousand ;  and  exactly  the  same  muscular 


Great  Men  and  their  Environment.      225 

effect  will  emerge  if  other  irritants  than  galvanism 
are  employed.  The  irritant  has  merely  started  or 
provoked  something  which  then  went  on  of  itself,  — 
as  a  match  may  start  a  fire  which  consumes  a  whole 
town.  And  qualitatively  as  well  as  quantitatively  the 
effect  may  be  absolutely  incommensurable  with  the 
cause.  We  find  this  condition  of  things  in  all  organic 
matter.  Chemists  are  distracted  by  the  difficulties 
which  the  instability  of  albuminoid  compounds  op- 
poses to  their  study.  Two  specimens,  treated  in 
what  outwardly  seem  scrupulously  identical  condi- 
tions, behave  in  quite  different  ways.  You  know 
about  the  invisible  factors  of  fermentation,  and  how 
the  fate  of  a  jar  of  milk  —  whether  it  turn  into  a  sour 
clot  or  a  mass  of  koumiss  —  depends  on  whether  the 
lactic  acid  ferment  or  the  alcoholic  is  introduced  first, 
and  gets  ahead  of  the  other  in  starting  the  process. 
Now,  when  the  result  is  the  tendency  of  an  ovum, 
itself  invisible  to  the  naked  eye,  to  tip  towards  this 
direction  or  that  in  its  further  evolution,  —  to  bring 
forth  a  genius  or  a  dunce,  even  as  the  rain-drop  passes 
east  or  west  of  the  pebble,  —  is  it  not  obvious  that  the 
deflecting  cause  must  lie  in  a  region  so  recondite  and 
minute,  must  be  such  a  ferment  of  a  ferment,  an  infinite- 
simal of  so  high  an  order,  that  surmise  itself  may  never 
succeed  even  in  attempting  to  frame  an  image  of  it? 

Such  being  the  case,  was  not  Darwin  right  to  turn 
his  back  upon  that  region  altogether,  and  to  keep  his 
own  problem  carefully  free  from  all  entanglement  with 
matters  such  as  these?  The  success  of  his  work  is  a 
sufficiently  affirmative  reply. 

And  this  brings  us  at  last  to  the  heart  of  our  sub- 
ject. The  causes  of  production  of  great  men  lie  in  a 

'5 


226         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

sphere  wholly  inaccessible  to  the  social  philosopher. 
He  must  simply  accept  -geniuses  as  data,  just  as  Dar- 
win accepts  his  spontaneous  variations.  For  him,  as 
for  Darwin,  the  only  problem  is,  these  data  being 
given,  How  does  the  environment  affect  them,  and 
how  do  they  affect  the  environment?  Now,  I  affirm 
that  the  relation  of  the  visible  environment  to  the 
great  man  is  in  the  main  exactly  what  it  is  to  the 
'  variation '  in  the  Darwinian  philosophy.  It  chiefly 
adopts  or  rejects,  preserves  or  destroys,  in  short  selects 
him.1  And  whenever  it  adopts  and  preserves  the 
great  man,  it  becomes  modified  by  his  influence  in 
an  entirely  original  and  peculiar  way.  He  acts  as  a 
ferment,  and  changes  its  constitution,  just  as  the  ad- 
vent of  a  new  zoological  species  changes  the  faunal 
and  floral  equilibrium  of  the  region  in  which  it  ap- 
pears. We  all  recollect  Mr.  Darwin's  famous  state- 
ment of  the  influence  of  cats  on  the  growth  of  clover 
in  their  neighborhood.  We  all  have  read  of  the 
effects  of  the  European  rabbit  in  New  Zealand,  and 
we  have  many  of  us  taken  part  in  the  controversy 
about  the  English  sparrow  here,  —  whether  he  kills 
most  canker-worms,  or  drives  away  most  native 
birds.  Just  so  the  great  man,  whether  he  be  an  im- 
portation from  without  like  Clive  in  India  or  Agassiz 
here,  or  whether  he  spring  from  the  soil  like  Maho- 
met or  Franklin,  brings  about  a  rearrangement,  on 
a  large  or  a  small  scale,  of  the  pre-existing  social 
relations. 

1  It  is  true  that  it  remodels  him,  also,  to  some  degree,  by  its  edu- 
cative influence,  and  that  this  constitutes  a  considerable  difference 
between  the  social  case  and  the  zoological  case.  I  neglect  this  aspect 
of  the  relation  here,  for  the  other  is  the  more  important.  At  the  end 
of  the  article  I  will  return  to  it  incidentally. 


Great  Men  and  their  Environment.      227 

The  mutations  of  societies,  then,  from  generation 
to  generation,  are  in  the  main  due  directly  or  indi- 
rectly to  the  acts  or  the  example  of  individuals  whose 
genius  was  so  adapted  to  the  receptivities  of  the  mo- 
ment, or  whose  accidental  position  of  authority  was 
so  critical  that  they  became  ferments,  initiators  of 
movement,  setters  of  precedent  or  fashion,  centres  of 
corruption,  or  destroyers  of  other  persons,  whose 
gifts,  had  they  had  free  play,  would  have  led  society 
in  another  direction. 

We  see  this  power  of  individual  initiative  exempli- 
fied on  a  small  scale  all  about  us,  and  on  a  large 
scale  in  the  case  of  the  leaders  of  history.  It  is  only 
following  the  common-sense  method  of  a  Lyell,  a 
Darwin,  and  a  Whitney  to  interpret  the  unknown  by 
the  known,  and  reckon  up  cumulatively  the  only 
causes  of  social  change  we  can  directly  observe. 
Societies  of  men  are  just  like  individuals,  in  that  both 
at  any  given  moment  offer  ambiguous  potentialities 
of  development.  Whether  a  young  man  enters  busi- 
ness or  the  ministry  may  depend  on  a  decision  which 
has  to  be  made  before  a  certain  day.  He  takes  the 
place  offered  in  the  counting-house,  and  is  committed. 
Little  by  little,  the  habits,  the  knowledges,  of  the 
other  career,  which  once  lay  so  near,  cease  to  be 
reckoned  even  among  his  possibilities.  At  first,  he 
may  sometimes  doubt  whether  the  self  he  murdered 
in  that  decisive  hour  might  not  have  been  the  better 
of  the  two ;  but  with  the  years  such  questions  them- 
selves expire,  and  the  old  alternative  ego,  once  so 
vivid,  fades  into  something  less  substantial  than  a 
dream.  It  is  no  otherwise  with  nations.  They  may 
be  committed  by  kings  and  ministers  to  peace  or  war, 
by  generals  to  victory  or  defeat,  by  prophets  to  this 


228          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

religion  or  to  that,  by  various  geniuses  to  fame  in  art, 
science,  or  industry.  A  war  is  a  true  point  of  bifur- 
cation of  future  possibilities.  Whether  it  fail  or  suc- 
ceed, its  declaration  must  be  the  starting-point  of  new 
policies.  Just  so  does  a  revolution,  or  any  great  civic 
precedent,  become  a  deflecting  influence,  whose  opera- 
tions widen  with  the  course  of  time.  Communities 
obey  their  ideals ;  and  an  accidental  success  fixes  an 
ideal,  as  an  accidental  failure  blights  it. 

Would  England  have  to-day  the  '  imperial '  ideal 
which  she  now  has,  if  a  certain  boy  named  Bob  Clive 
had  shot  himself,  as  he  tried  to  do,  at  Madras?  Would 
she  be  the  drifting  raft  she  is  now  in  European  affairs  1 
if  a  Frederic  the  Great  had  inherited  her  throne 
instead  of  a  Victoria,  and  if  Messrs.  Bentham,  Mill, 
Cobden,  and  Bright  had  all  been  born  in  Prussia? 
England  has,  no  doubt,  to-day  precisely  the  same 
intrinsic  value  relatively  to  the  other  nations  that  she 
ever  had.  There  is  no  such  fine  accumulation  of 
human  material  upon  the  globe.  But  in  England  the 
material  has  lost  effective  form,  while  in  Germany  it 
has  found  it.  Leaders  give  the  form.  Would  Eng> 
land  be  crying  forward  and  backward  at  once,  as  she 
does  now,  '  letting  I  will  not  wait  upon  I  would,' 
wishing  to  conquer  but  not  to  fight,  if  her  ideal  had 
in  all  these  years  been  fixed  by  a  succession  of  states- 
men of  supremely  commanding  personality,  working 
in  one  direction?  Certainly  not.  She  would  have 
espoused,  for  better  or  worse,  either  one  course  or 
another.  Had  Bismarck  died  in  his  cradle,  the  Ger- 
mans would  still  be  satisfied  with  appearing  to  them- 
selves as  a  race  of  spectacled  Gelehrten  and  political 
herbivora,  and  to  the  French  as  ces  bons,  or  ces  naifst 
*  The  reader  will  remember  when  this  was  written. 


Great  Men  and  their  Environment.     229 

Allemands.  Bismarck's  will  showed  them,  to  their 
own  great  astonishment,  that  they  could  play  a  far 
livelier  game.  The  lesson  will  not  be  forgotten. 
Germany  may  have  many  vicissitudes,  but  they  — 

"  will  never  do  away,  I  ween, 
The  marks  of  that  which  once  hath  been  "  — 

of  Bismarck's  initiative,  namely,  from  1860  to  1873. 

The  fermentative  influence  of  geniuses  must  be 
admitted  as,  at  any  rate,  one  factor  in  the  changes 
that  constitute  social  evolution.  The  community 
may  evolve  in  many  ways.  The  accidental  presence 
of  this  or  that  ferment  decides  in  which  way  it  shall 
evolve.  Why,  the  very  birds  of  the  forest,  the  par- 
rot, the  mino,  have  the  power  of  human  speech,  but 
never  develop  it  of  themselves;  some  one  must  be 
there  to  teacJ  them.  So  with  us  individuals.  Rem- 
brandt must  te~ch  us  to  enjoy  the  struggle  of  light 
with  darkness,  Wagner  to  enjoy  peculiar  musical 
effects ;  Dickens  gives  a  twist  to  our  sentimentality, 
Artemus  Ward  to  our  humor;  Emerson  kindles  a 
new  moral  light  within  us.  But  it  is  like  Columbus's 
egg.  "  All  can  raise  the  flowers  now,  for  all  have  got 
the  seed."  But  if  this  be  true  of  the  individuals  in 
the  community,  how  can  it  be  false  of  the  community 
as  a  whole?  If  shown  a  certain  way,  a  community 
may  take  it;  if  not,  it  will  never  find  it.  And  the 
ways  are  to  a  large  extent  indeterminate  in  advance. 
A  nation  may  obey  either  of  many  alternative  im- 
pulses given  by  different  men  of  genius,  and  still  live 
and  be  prosperous,  just  as  a  man  may  enter  either  o( 
many  businesses.  Only,  the  prosperities  may  differ  in 
their  type. 

But  the  indeterminism  is  not  absolute.      Not  every 


230         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

'  man  '  fits  every  '  hour.'  Some  incompatibilities  there 
are.  A  given  genius  may  come  either  too  early  or 
too  late.  Peter  the  Hermit  would  now  be  sent  to  a 
lunatic  asylum.  John  Mill  in  the  tenth  century 
would  have  lived  and  died  unknown.  Cromwell  and 
Napoleon  need  their  revolutions,  Grant  his  civil  war. 
An  Ajax  gets  no  fame  in  the  day  of  telescopic-sighted 
rifles ;  and,  to  express  differently  an  instance  which 
Spencer  uses,  what  could  a  Watt  have  effected  in  a 
tribe  which  no  precursive  genius  had  taught  to  smelt 
iron  or  to  turn  a  lathe? 

Now,  the  important  thing  to  notice  is  that  what 
makes  a  certain  genius  now  incompatible  with  his 
surroundings  is  usually  the  fact  that  some  previous 
genius  of  a  different  strain  has  warped  the  community 
away  from  the  sphere  of  his  possible  effectiveness. 
After  Voltaire,  no  Peter  the  Hermit;  after  Charles 
IX.  and  Louis  XIV.,  no  general  protestantization  of 
France;  after  a  Manchester  school,  a  Beaconsfield's 
success  is  transient;  after  a  Philip  II.,  a  Castelar 
makes  little  headway ;  and  so  on.  Each  bifurcation 
cuts  off  certain  sides  of  the  field  altogether,  and  limits 
the  future  possible  angles  of  deflection.  A  commu- 
nity is  a  living  thing,  and  in  words  which  I  can  do  no 
better  than  quote  from  Professor  Clifford,1  "  it  is  the 
peculiarity  of  living  things  not  merely  that  they 
change  under  the  influence  of  surrounding  circum- 
stances, but  that  any  change  which  takes  place  in 
them  is  not  lost  but  retained,  and  as  it  were  built  into 
the  organism  to  serve  as  the  foundation  for  future 
actions.  If  you  cause  any  distortion  in  the  growth 
of  a  tree  and  make  it  crooked,  whatever  you  may  do 
afterwards  to  make  the  tree  straight  the  mark  of  your 

1  Lectures  and  fissays,  i.  82. 


Great  Men  and  their  Environment.     231 

distortion  is  there ;  it  is  absolutely  indelible ;  it  has 
become  part  of  the  tree's  nature.  .  .  .  Suppose,  how- 
ever, that  you  take  a  lump  of  gold,  melt  it,  and  let  it 
cool.  .  .  .  No  one  can  tell  by  examining  a  piece  of 
gold  how  often  it  has  been  melted  and  cooled  in  geo- 
logic ages,  or  even  in  the  last  year  by  the  hand  of 
man.  Any  one  who  cuts  down  an  oak  can  tell  by  the 
rings  in  its  trunk  how  many  times  winter  has  frozen  it 
into  widowhood,  and  how  many  times  summer  has 
warmed  it  into  life.  A  living  being  must  always  con- 
tain within  itself  the  history,  not  merely  of  its  own 
existence,  but  of  all  its  ancestors." 

Every  painter  can  tell  us  how  each  added  line 
deflects  his  picture  in  a  certain  sense.  Whatever 
lines  follow  must  be  built  on  those  first  laid  down. 
Every  author  who  starts  to  rewrite  a  piece  of  work 
knows  how  impossible  it  becomes  to  use  any  of  the 
first- written  pages  again.  The  new  beginning  has 
already  excluded  the  possibility  of  those  earlier 
phrases  and  transitions,  while  it  has  at  the  same 
time  created  the  possibility  of  an  indefinite  set  of 
new  ones,  no  one  of  which,  however,  is  completely 
determined  in  advance.  Just  so  the  social  surround- 
ings of  the  past  and  present  hour  exclude  the 
possibility  of  accepting  certain  contributions  from 
individuals ;  but  they  do  not  positively  define  what 
contributions  shall  be  accepted,  for  in  themselves 
they  are  powerless  to  fix  what  the  nature  of  the 
individual  offerings  shall  be.1 

1  Mr.  Grant  Allen  himself,  in  an  article  from  which  I  shall  pres- 
ently quote,  admits  that  a  set  of  people  who,  if  they  had  been  exposed 
ages  ago  to  the  geographical  agencies  of  Timbuctoo,  would  have 
developed  into  negroes  might  now,  after  a  protracted  exposure  to  the 
conditions  of  Hamburg,  never  become  negroes  if  transplanted  to 
Timbuctoo. 


232          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

Thus  social  evolution  is  a  resultant  of  the  inter- 
action of  two  wholly  distinct  factors, — the  individual, 
deriving  his  peculiar  gifts  from  the  play  of  physiolog- 
ical and  infra-social  forces,  but  bearing  all  the  power 
of  initiative  and  origination  in  his  hands ;  and,  second, 
the  social  environment,  with  its  power  of  adopting  or 
rejecting  both  him  and  his  gifts.  Both  factors  are 
essential  to  change.  The  community  stagnates  with- 
out the  impulse  of  the  individual.  The  impulse  dies 
away  without  the  sympathy  of  the  community. 

All  this  seems  nothing  more  than  common-sense. 
All  who  wish  to  see  itxleveloped  by  a  man  of  genius 
should  read  that  golden  little  work,  Bagehot's  Physics 
and  Politics,  in  which  (it  seems  to  me)  the  complete 
sense  of  the  way  in  which  concrete  things  grow  and 
change  is  as  livingly  present  as  the  straining  after  a 
pseudo-philosophy  of  evolution  is  livingly  absent. 
But  there  are  never  wanting  minds  to  whom  such 
views  seem  personal  and  contracted,  and  allied  to  an 
anthropomorphism  long  exploded  in  other  fields  of 
knowledge.  "  The  individual  withers,  and  the  world 
is  more  and  more,"  to  these  writers ;  and  in  a  Buckle, 
a  Draper,  and  a  Taine  we  all  know  how  much  the 
'  world '  has  come  to  be  almost  synonymous  with 
the  climate.  We  all  know,  too,  how  the  controversy 
has  been  kept  up  between  the  partisans  of  a  '  science 
of  history '  and  those  who  deny  the  existence  of  any- 
thing like  necessary  '  laws '  where  human  societies 
are  concerned.  Mr.  Spencer,  at  the  opening  of  his 
Study  of  Sociology,  makes  an  onslaught  on  the 
'  great-man  theory '  of  history,  from  which  a  few 
passages  may  be  quoted :  — 

"The  genesis  of  societies  by  the  action  of  great  men 
may  be  comfortably  believed  so  long  as,  resting  in  general 


Great  Men  and  their  Environment.      233 

notions,  you  do  not  ask  for  particulars.  But  now,  if,  dis- 
satisfied with  vagueness,  we  demand  that  our  ideas  shall  be 
brought  into  focus  and  exactly  defined,  we  discover  the 
hypothesis  to  be  utterly  incoherent.  If,  not  stopping  at 
the  explanation  of  social  progress  as  due  to  the  great  man, 
we  go  back  a  step,  and  ask,  Whence  comes  the  great  man  ? 
we  find  that  the  theory  breaks  down  completely.  The 
question  has  two  conceivable  answers :  his  origin  is  super- 
natural, or  it  is  natural.  Is  his  origin  supernatural?  Then 
he  is  a  deputy  god,  and  we  have  theocracy  once  removed, 
—  or,  rather,  not  removed  at  all.  ...  Is  this  an  unaccept- 
able solution  ?  Then  the  origin  of  the  great  man  is  natural ; 
and  immediately  this  is  recognized,  he  must  be  classed 
with  all  other  phenomena  in  the  society  that  gave  him  birth 
as  a  product  of  its  antecedents.  Along  with  the  whole 
generation  of  which  he  forms  a  minute  part,  along  with  its 
institutions,  language,  knowledge,  manners,  and  its  multi- 
tudinous arts  and  appliances,  he  is  a  resultant,  .  .  .  You 
must  admit  that  the  genesis  of  the  great  man  depends  on 
the  long  series  of  complex  influences  which  has  produced 
the  race  in  which  he  appears,  and  the  social  state  into 
which  that  race  has  slowly  grown.  .  .  .  Before  he  can 
remake  his  society,  his  society  must  make  him.  All  those 
changes  of  which  he  is  the  proximate  initiator  have  their 
chief  causes  in  the  generations  he  descended  from.  If 
there  is  to  be  anything  like  a  real  explanation  of  those 
changes,  it  must  be  sought  in  that  aggregate  of  conditions 
out  of  which  both  he  and  they  have  arisen." * 

Now,  it  seems  to  me  that  there  is  something  which 
one  might  almost  call  impudent  in  the  attempt  which 
Mr.  Spencer  makes,  in  the  first  sentence  of  this  ex- 
tract, to  pin  the  reproach  of  vagueness  upon  those 
who  believe  in  the  power  of  initiative  of  the  great 
man. 

1  Study  of  Sociology,  pages  33-35. 


234         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

Suppose  I  say  that  the  singular  moderation  which 
now  distinguishes  social,  political,  and  religious  dis- 
cussion in  England,  and  contrasts  so  strongly  with 
the  bigotry  and  dogmatism  of  sixty  years  ago,  is 
largely  due  to  J.  S.  Mill's  example.  I  may  possibly 
be  wrong  about  the  facts;  but  I  am,  at  any  rate, 
'  asking  for  particulars,'  and  not  '  resting  in  general 
notions.'  And  if  Mr.  Spencer  should  tell  me  it 
started  from  no  personal  influence  whatever,  but  from 
the  '  aggregate  of  conditions,'  the  '  generations,"  Mill 
and  all  his  contemporaries  '  descended  from,'  the 
whole  past  order  of  nature  in  short,  surely  he,  not  I, 
would  be  the  person  '  satisfied  with  vagueness.' 

The  fact  is  that  Mr.  Spencer's  sociological  method 
is  identical  with  that  of  one  who  would  invoke  the 
zodiac  to  account  for  the  fall  of  the  sparrow,  and  the 
thirteen  at  table  to  explain  the  gentleman's  death. 
It  is  of  little  more  scientific  value  than  the  Oriental 
method  of  replying  to  whatever  question  arises  by  the 
unimpeachable  truism,  "  God  is  great."  Not  to  fall 
back  on  the  gods,  where  a  proximate  principle  may 
be  found,  has  with  us  Westerners  long  since  become 
the  sign  of  an  efficient  as  distinguished  from  an  inef- 
ficient intellect. 

To  believe  that  the  cause  of  everything  is  to  be 
found  in  its  antecedents  is  the  starting-point,  the  in- 
itial postulate,  not  the  goal  and  consummation,  of 
science.  If  she  is  simply  to  lead  us  out  of  the  laby- 
rinth by  the  same  hole  we  went  in  by  three  or  four 
thousand  years  ago,  it  seems  hardly  worth  while  to 
have  followed  her  through  the  darkness  at  all.  If 
anything  is  humanly  certain  it  is  that  the  great  man's 
society,  properly  so  called,  does  not  make  him  before 
he  can  remake  it.  Physiological  forces,  with  which 


Great  Men  and  their  Environment.      235 

the  social,  political,  geographical,  and  to  a  great 
extent  anthropological  conditions  have  just  as  much 
and  just  as  little  to  do  as  the  condition  of  the  crater 
of  Vesuvius  has  to  do  with  the  flickering  of  this  gas  by 
which  I  write,  are  what  make  him.  Can  it  be  that  Mr. 
Spencer  holds  the  convergence  of  sociological  pres- 
sures to  have  so  impinged  on  Stratford-upon-Avon 
about  the  26th  of  April,  1564,  that  a  W.  Shakespeare, 
with  all  his  mental  peculiarities,  had  to  be  born  there, 
—  as  the  pressure  of  water  outside  a  certain  boat  will 
cause  a  stream  of  a  certain  form  to  ooze  into  a  par- 
ticular leak?  And  does  he  mean  to  say  that  if  the 
aforesaid  W.  Shakespeare  had  died  of  cholera  infan- 
tum,  another  mother  at  Stratford-upon-Avon  would 
needs  have  engendered  a  duplicate  copy  of  him,  to 
restore  the  sociologic  equilibrium, — just  as  the  same 
stream  of  water  will  reappear,  no  matter  how  often 
you  pass  a  sponge  over  the  leak,  so  long  as  the  out- 
side level  remains  unchanged?  Or  might  the  substi- 
tute arise  at  '  Stratford-atte-Bowe '  ?  Here,  as  else- 
where, it  is  very  hard,  in  the  midst  of  Mr.  Spencer's 
vagueness,  to  tell  what  he  does  mean  at  all. 

We  have,  however,  in  his  disciple,  Mr.  Grant  Allen, 
one  who  leaves  us  in  no  doubt  whatever  of  his  precise 
meaning.  This  widely  informed,  suggestive,  and  bril- 
liant writer  published  last  year  a  couple  of  articles  in 
the  Gentleman's  Magazine,  in  which  he  maintained  that 
individuals  have  no  initiative  in  determining  social 
change. 

"The  differences  between  one  nation  and  another, 
whether  in  intellect,  commerce,  art,  morals,  or  general  tem- 
perament, ultimately  depend,  not  upon  any  mysterious 
properties  of  race,  nationality,  or  any  other  unknown  and 
unintelligible  abstractions,  but  simply  and  solely  upon  the 


236         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

physical  circumstances  to  which  they  are  exposed.  If  it 
be  a  fact,  as  we  know  it  to  be,  that  the  French  nation  dif- 
fers recognizably  from  the  Chinese,  and  the  people  of 
Hamburg  differ  recognizably  from  the  people  of  Timbuctoo, 
then  the  notorious  and  conspicuous  differences  between 
them  are  wholly  due  to  the  geographical  position  of  the 
various  races.  If  the  people  who  went  to  Hamburg  had 
gone  to  Timbuctoo,  they  would  now  be  indistinguishable 
from  the  semi-barbarian  negroes  who  inhabit  that  central 
African  metropolis ; l  and  if  the  people  who  went  to  Tim- 
buctoo had  gone  to  Hamburg,  they  would  now  have  been 
white-skinned  merchants  driving  a  roaring  trade  in  imi- 
tation sherry  and  indigestible  port.  .  .  .  The  differentia- 
ting agency  must  be  sought  in  the  great  permament 
geographical  features  of  land  and  sea;  .  .  .  these  have 
necessarily  and  inevitably  moulded  the  characters  and  histo- 
ries of  every  nation  upon  the  earth.  .  .  .  We  cannot  regard 
any  nation  as  an  active  agent  in  differentiating  itself.  Only 
the  surrounding  circumstances  can  have  any  effect  in  such 
a  direction.  [These  two  sentences  dogmatically  deny  the 
existence  of  the  relatively  independent  physiological  cycle 
of  causation.]  To  suppose  otherwise  is  to  suppose  that 
the  mind  of  man  is  exempt  from  the  universal  law  of  caus- 
ation. There  is  no  caprice,  no  spontaneous  impulse,  in 
human  endeavors.  Even  tastes  and  inclinations  must  them- 
selves be  the  result  of  surrounding  causes." a 

1  No !  not  even  though  they  were  bodily  brothers  1  The  geo- 
graphical factor  utterly  vanishes  before  the  ancestral  factor.  The 
difference  between  Hamburg  and  Timbuctoo  as  a  cause  of  ultimate 
divergence  of  two  races  is  as  nothing  to  the  difference  of  consti- 
tution of  the  ancestors  of  the  two  races,  even  though  as  in  twin 
brothers,  this  difference  might  be  invisible  to  the  naked  eye.  No 
two  couples  of  the  most  homogeneous  race  could  possibly  be  found 
so  identical  as,  if  set  in  identical  environments,  to  give  rise  to  two 
identical  lineages.  The  minute  divergence  at  the  start  grows  broader 
with  each  generation,  and  ends  with  entirely  dissimilar  breeds. 

*  Article  '  Nation   Making,'   in   Gentleman's   Magazine,   1878.     I 


Great  Men  and  their  Environment.     237 

Elsewhere  Mr.  Allen,  writing  of  the  Greek  culture, 
says :  — 

"  It  was  absolutely  and  unreservedly  the  product  of  the 
geographical  Hellas,  acting  upon  the  given  factor  of  the 
undifferentiated  Aryan  brain.  ...  To  me  it  seems  a  self- 
evident  proposition  that  nothing  whatsoever  can  differentiate 
one  body  of  men  from  another,  except  the  physical  con- 
ditions in  which  they  are  set,  —  including,  of  course,  under 
the  term  physical  conditions  the  relations  of  place  and  time 
in  which  they  stand  with  regard  to  other  bodies  of  men. 
To  suppose  otherwise  is  to  deny  the  primordial  law  of 
causation.  To  imagine  that  the  mind  can  differentiate  itself 
is  to  imagine  that  it  can  be  differentiated  without  a  cause." 1 

This  outcry  about  the  law  of  universal  causation 
being  undone,  the  moment  we  refuse  to  invest  in 
the  kind  of  causation  which  is  peddled  round  by 
a  particular  school,  makes  one  impatient.  These 
writers  have  no  imagination  of  alternatives.  With 
them  there  is  no  tertium  quid  between  outward  envi- 
ronment and  miracle.  Aut  Ccesar,  aut  nullus!  Aut 
Spencerism,  aut  catechism ! 

If  by  '  physical  conditions  '  Mr.  Allen  means  what 
he  does  mean,  the  outward  cycle  of  visible  nature 
and  man,  his  assertion  is  simply  physiologically  false. 
For  a  national  mind  differentiates  '  itself'  whenever 
a  genius  is  born  in  its  midst  by  causes  acting  in 
the  invisible  and  molecular  cycle.  But  if  Mr.  Allen 
means  by  '  physical  conditions  '  the  whole  of  nature, 
his  assertion,  though  true,  forms  but  the  vague  Asiatic 

quote  from  the  reprint  in  the  Popular  Science  Monthly  Supplement, 
December,  1878,  pages  121,  123,  126. 

1  Article   '  Hellas,'  in   Gentleman's   Magazine,    1878.     Reprint  in 
Popular  Science  Monthly  Supplement,  September,  1878. 


2j  8          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

profession  of  belief  in  an  all-enveloping  fate,  which 
certainly  need  not  plume  itself  on  any  specially 
advanced  or  scientific  character. 

And  how  can  a  thinker  so  clever  as  Mr.  Allen  fail 
to  have  distinguished  in  these  matters  between  neces- 
sary conditions  and  sufficient  conditions  of  a  given 
result?  The  French  say  that  to  have  an  omelet  we 
must  break  our  eggs ;  that  is,  the  breaking  of  eggs 
is  a  necessary  condition  of  the  omelet.  But  is  it  a 
sufficient  condition?  Does  an  omelet  appear  when- 
ever three  eggs  are  broken?  So  of  the  Greek  mind. 
To  get  such  versatile  intelligence  it  may  be  that  such 
commercial  dealings  with  the  world  as  the  geograph- 
ical Hellas  afforded  are  a  necessary  condition.  But 
if  they  are  a  sufficient  condition,  why  did  not  the 
Phoenicians  outstrip  the  Greeks  in  intelligence?  No 
geographical  environment  can  produce  a  given  type 
of  mind.  It  can  only  foster  and  further  certain 
types  fortuitously  produced,  and  thwart  and  frustrate 
others.  Once  again,  its  function  is  simply  selective, 
and  determines  what  shall  actually  be  only  by  de- 
stroying what  is  positively  incompatible.  An  Arc- 
tic environment  is  incompatible  with  improvident 
habits  in  its  denizens;  but  whether  the  inhabitants 
of  such  a  region  shall  unite  with  their  thrift  the 
peacefulness  of  the  Eskimo  or  the  pugnacity  of  the 
Norseman  is,  so  far  as  the  climate  is  concerned,  an 
accident.  Evolutionists  should  not  forget  that  we 
all  have  five  fingers  not  because  four  or  six  would 
not  do  just  as  well,  but  merely  because  the  first  verte- 
brate above  the  fishes  happened  to  have  that  number. 
He  owed  his  prodigious  success  in  founding  a  line  of 
descent  to  some  entirely  other  quality,  —  we  know 


Great  Men  and  their  Environment.      239 

not  which,  —  but  the  inessential  five  fingers  were 
taken  in  tow  and  preserved  to  the  present  day.  So 
of  most  social  peculiarities.  Which  of  them  shall  be 
taken  in  tow  by  the  few  qualities  which  the  environ- 
ment necessarily  exacts  is  a  matter  of  what  physio- 
logical accidents  shall  happen  among  individuals. 
Mr.  Allen  promises  to  prove  his  thesis  in  detail  by 
the  examples  of  China,  India,  England,  Rome,  etc.  I 
have  not  the  smallest  hesitation  in  predicting  that  he 
will  do  no  more  with  these  examples  than  he  has 
done  with  Hellas.  He  will  appear  upon  the  scene 
after  the  fact,  and  show  that  the  quality  developed 
by  each  race  was,  naturally  enough,  not  incompatible 
with  its  habitat.  But  he  will  utterly  fail  to  show  that 
the  particular  form  of  compatibility  fallen  into  in  each 
case  was  the  one  necessary  and  only  possible  form. 

Naturalists  know  well  enough  how  indeterminate  the 
harmonies  between  a  fauna  and  its  environment  are. 
An  animal  may  better  his  chances  of  existence  in 
either  of  many  ways,  —  growing  aquatic,  arboreal,  or 
subterranean ;  small  and  swift,  or  massive  and  bulky ; 
spiny,  horny,  slimy,  or  venomous;  more  timid  or 
more  pugnacious;  more  cunning  or  more  fertile  of 
offspring;  more  gregarious  or  more  solitary;  or  in 
other  ways  besides,  —  and  any  one  of  these  ways  may 
suit  him  to  many  widely  different  environments. 

Readers  of  Mr.  A.  R.  Wallace  will  well  remember 
the  striking  illustrations  of  this  in  his  Malay  Archi- 
pelago :  — 

"  Borneo  closely  resembles  New  Guinea  not  only  in  its 
vast  size  and  its  freedom  from  volcanoes,  but  in  its  variety 
of  geological  structure,  its  uniformity  of  climate,  and  the 
general  aspect  of  the  forest  vegetation  that  clothes  its  sur- 
face ;  the  Moluccas  are  the  counterpart  of  the  Philippines 


24°         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

in  their  volcanic  structure,  their  extreme  fertility,  their 
luxuriant  forests,  and  their  frequent  earthquakes ;  and 
Bali,  with  the  east  end  of  Java,  has  a  climate  almost  as 
dry  and  a  soil  almost  as  arid  as  that  of  Timor.  Yet  be- 
tween these  corresponding  groups  of  islands,  constructed, 
as  it  were,  after  the  same  pattern,  subjected  to  the  same 
climate,  and  bathed  by  the  same  oceans,  there  exists  the 
greatest  possible  contrast  when  we  compare  their  animal 
productions.  Nowhere  does  the  ancient  doctrine  that 
differences  or  similarities  in  the  various  forms  of  life  that 
inhabit  different  countries  are  due  to  corresponding  physi- 
cal differences  or  similarities  in  the  countries  themselves, 
meet  with  so  direct  and  palpable  a  contradiction.  Borneo 
and  New  Guinea,  as  alike  physically  as  two  distinct  coun- 
tries can  be,  are  zoologically  wide  as  the  poles  asunder; 
while  Australia,  with  its  dry  winds,  its  open  plains,  its  stony 
deserts,  and  its  temperate  climate,  yet  produces  birds  and 
quadrupeds  which  are  closely  related  to  those  inhabiting 
the  hot,  damp,  luxuriant  forests  which  everywhere  clothe 
the  plains  and  mountains  of  New  Guinea." 

Here  we  have  similar  physical-geography  environ- 
ments harmonizing  with  widely  differing  animal  lives, 
and  similar  animal  lives  harmonizing  with  widely 
differing  geographical  environments.  A  singularly 
accomplished  writer,  E.  Gryzanowski,  in  the  North 
American  Review,1  uses  the  instances  of  Sardinia  and 
Corsica  in  support  of  this  thesis  with  great  effect. 
He  says :  — 

"These  sister  islands,  lying  in  the  very  centre  of  the 
Mediterranean,  at  almost  equal  distances  from  the  centres 
of  Latin  and  Neo-Latin  civilization,  within  easy  reach  of 
the  Phoenician,  the  Greek,  and  the  Saracen,  with  a  coast- 

1  Vol.  cxiii.  p.  318  (October,  1871). 


Great  Men  and  their  Environment.      241 

line  of  more  than  a  thousand  miles,  endowed  with  obvious 
and  tempting  advantages,  and  hiding  untold  sources  of 
agricultural  and  mineral  wealth,  have  nevertheless  remained 
unknown,  unheeded,  and  certainly  uncared  for  during  the 
thirty  centuries  of  European  history.  .  .  .  These  islands 
have  dialects,  but  no  language ;  records  of  battles,  but  no 
history.  They  have  customs,  but  no  laws ;  the  vendetta, 
but  no  justice.  They  have  wants  and  wealth,  but  no  com- 
merce ;  timber  and  ports,  but  no  shipping.  They  have  le- 
gends, but  no  poetry ;  beauty,  but  no  art ;  and  twenty  years 
ago  it  could  still  be  said  that  they  had  universities,  but 
no  students.  .  .  .  That  Sardinia,  with  all  her  emotional 
and  picturesque  barbarism,  has  never  produced  a  single 
artist  is  almost  as  strange  as  her  barbarism  itself.  .  .  . 
Near  the  focus  of  European  civilization,  in  the  very  spot 
which  an  a  priori  geographer  would  point  out  as  the  most 
favorable  place  for  material  and  intellectual,  commercial, 
and  political  development,  these  strange  sister  islands 
have  slept  their  secular  sleep,  like  nodes  on  the  sounding- 
board  of  history." 

This  writer  then  goes  on  to  compare  Sardinia  and 
Sicily  with  some  detail.  All  the  material  advantages 
are  in  favor  of  Sardinia,  "  and  the  Sardinian  popula- 
tion, being  of  an  ancestry  more  mixed  than  that  of 
the  English  race,  would  justify  far  higher  expecta- 
tions than  that  of  Sicily."  Yet  Sicily's  past  history 
has  been  brilliant  in  the  extreme,  and  her  commerce 
to-day  is  great.  Dr.  Gryzanowiski  has  his  own 
theory  of  the  historic  torpor  of  these  favored  isles. 
He  thinks  they  stagnated  because  they  never  gained 
political  autonomy,  being  always  owned  by  some 
Continental  power.  I  will  not  dispute  the  theory; 
but  I  will  ask,  Why  did  they  not  gain  it?  and  answer 
immediately :  Simply  because  no  individuals  were 

16 


242          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

born  there  with  patriotism  and  ability  enough  to 
inflame  their  countrymen  with  national  pride,  ambi- 
tion, and  thirst  for  independent  life.  Corsicans  and 
Sardinians  are  probably  as  good  stuff  as  any  of  their 
neighbors.  But  the  best  wood-pile  will  not  blaze 
till  a  torch  is  applied,  and  the  appropriate  torches 
seem  to, have  been  wanting.1 

Sporadic  great  men  come  everywhere.     But  for  a 
community  to   get  vibrating  through   and   through 


1  I  am  well  aware  that  in  much  that  follows  (though  in  nothing 
that  precedes)  I  seem  to  be  crossing  the  heavily  shotted  bows  of 
Mr.  Galton,  for  whose  laborious  investigations  into  the  heredity  of 
genius  I  have  the  greatest  respect.  Mr.  Galton  inclines  to  think 
that  genius  of  intellect  and  passion  is  bound  to  express  itself,  what- 
ever the  outward  opportunity,  and  that  within  any  given  race  an 
equal  number  of  geniuses  of  each  grade  must  needs  be  born  in  every 
equal  period  of  time;  a  subordinate  race  cannot  possibly  engender 
a  large  number  of  high-class  geniuses,  etc.  He  would,  I  suspect, 
infer  the  suppositions  I  go  on  to  make  —  of  great  men  fortuitously 
assembling  around  a  given  epoch  and  making  it  great,  and  of  their 
being  fortuitously  absent  from  certain  places  and  times  (from  Sar- 
dinia, from  Boston  now,  etc.)  —  to  be  radically  vicious.  I  hardly 
think,  however,  that  he  does  justice  to  the  great  complexity  of  the 
conditions  of  effective  greatness,  and  to  the  way  in  which  the  physio- 
logical averages  of  production  may  be  masked  entirely  during  long 
periods,  either  by  the  accidental  mortality  of  geniuses  in  infancy,  or 
by  the  fact  that  the  particular  geniuses  born  happened  not  to  find 
tasks.  I  doubt  the  truth  of  his  assertion  that  intellectual  genius,  like 
murder,  'will  out.'  It  is  true  that  certain  types  are  irrepressible. 
Voltaire,  Shelley,  Carlyle,  can  hardly  be  conceived  leading  a  dumb 
and  vegetative  life  in  any  epoch.  But  take  Mr.  Galton  himself,  take 
his  cousin  Mr.  Darwin,  and  take  Mr.  Spencer :  nothing  is  to  me  more 
conceivable  than  that  at  another  epoch  all  three  of  these  men  might 
have  died  '  with  all  their  music  in  them,'  known  only  to  their  friends 
as  persons  of  strong  and  original  character  and  judgment.  What  has 
started  them  on  their  career  of  effective  greatness  is  simply  the 
accident  of  each  stumbling  upon  a  task  vast,  brilliant,  and  con- 
genial enough  to  call  out  the  convergence  of  all  his  passions  and  pow- 
ers. I  see  no  more  reason  why,  in  case  they  had  not  fallen  in  with 
their  several  hobbies  at  propitious  periods  in  their  life,  they  need 


Great  Men  and  their  Environment.      243 

with  intensely  active  life,  many  geniuses  coming 
together  and  in  rapid  succession  are  required.  This 
is  why  great  epochs  are  so  rare,  —  why  the  sudden 
bloom  of  a  Greece,  an  early  Rome,  a  Renaissance,  is 
such  a  mystery.  Blow  must  follow  blow  so  fast  that 
no  cooling  can  occur  in  the  intervals.  Then  the 
mass  of  the  nation  grows  incandescent,  and  may 
continue  to  glow  by  pure  inertia  long  after  the 
originators  of  its  internal  movement  have  passed 
away.  We  often  hear  surprise  expressed  that  in 
these  high  tides  of  human  affairs  not  only  the  people 
should  be  filled  with  stronger  life,  but  that  individual 
geniuses  should  seem  so  exceptionally  abundant. 
This  mystery  is  just  about  as  deep  as  the  time-hon- 
ored conundrum  as  to  why  great  rivers  flow  by  great 
towns.  It  is  true  that  great  public  fermentations 
awaken  and  adopt  many  geniuses,  who  in  more 
torpid  times  would  have  had  no  chance  to  work. 
But  over  and  above  this  there  must  be  an  excep- 
tional concourse  of  genius  about  a  time,  to  make 
the  fermentation  begin  at  all.  The  unlikeliness  of 
the  concourse  is  far  greater  than  the  unlikeliness  of 
any  particular  genius ;  hence  the  rarity  of  these  pe- 
riods and  the  exceptional  aspect  which  they  always 
wear. 

necessarily  have  hit  upon  other  hobbies,  and  made  themselves 
equally  great.  Their  case  seems  similar  to  that  of  the  Washing- 
tons,  Cromwells,  and  Grants,  who  simply  rose  to  their  occasions. 
But  apart  from  these  causes  of  fallacy,  I  am  strongly  disposed  to 
think  that  where  transcendent  geniuses  are  concerned  the  num- 
bers anyhow  are  so  small  that  their  appearance  will  not  fit  into 
any  scheme  of  averages.  That  is,  two  or  three  might  appear  to- 
gether, just  as  the  two  or  three  balls  nearest  the  target  centre 
might  be  fired  consecutively.  Take  longer  epochs  and  more 
firing,  and  the  great  geniuses  and  near  balls  would  on  the  whole 
be  more  spread  out. 


244         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

It  is  folly,  then,  to  speak  of  the  'laws  of  history1 
as  of  something  inevitable,  which  science  has  only  to 
discover,  and  whose  consequences  any  one  can  then 
foretell  but  do  nothing  to  alter  or  avert.  Why,  the 
very  laws  of  physics  are  conditional,  and  deal  with 
ifs.  The  physicist  does  not  say,  "  The  water  will 
boil  anyhow ;  "  he  only  says  it  will  boil  if  a  fire  be  kin- 
dled beneath  it.  And  so  the  utmost  the  student  of 
sociology  can  ever  predict  is  that  if  a  genius  of  a 
certain  sort  show  the  way,  society  will  be  sure  to  fol- 
low. It  might  long  ago  have  been  predicted  with 
great  confidence  that  both  Italy  and  Germany  would 
reach  a  stable  unity  if  some  one  could  but  succeed  in 
starting  the  process.  It  could  not  have  been  pre- 
dicted, however,  that  the  modus  operandi  in  each  case 
would  be  subordination  to  a  paramount  state  rather 
than  federation,  because  no  historian  could  have  cal- 
culated the  freaks  of  birth  and  fortune  which  gave  at 
the  same  moment  such  positions  of  authority  to  three 
such  peculiar  individuals  as  Napoleon  III.,  Bismarck, 
and  Cavour.  So  of  our  own  politics.  It  is  certain 
now  that  the  movement  of  the  independents,  reform- 
ers, or  whatever  one  please  to  call  them,  will  triumph. 
But  whether  it  do  so  by  converting  the  Republican 
party  to  its  ends,  or  by  rearing  a  new  party  on  the 
ruins  of  both  our  present  factions,  the  historian  can- 
not say.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  reform 
movement  would  make  more  progress  in  one  year 
with  an  adequate  personal  leader  than  as  now  in  ten 
without  one.  Were  there  a  great  citizen,  splendid 
with  every  civic  gift,  to  be  its  candidate,  who  can  doubt 
that  he  would  lead  us  to  victory?  But,  at  present, 
we,  his  environment,  who  sigh  for  him  and  would  so 
gladly  preserve  and  adopt  him  if  he  came,  can  neither 


Great  Men  and  their  Environment.      245 

move  without  him,  nor  yet  do  anything  to  bring  him 
forth.1 

To  conclude :  The  evolutionary  view  of  history, 
when  it  denies  the  vital  importance  of  individual  initi- 
ative, is,  then,  an  utterly  vague  and  unscientific  con- 
ception, a  lapse  from  modern  scientific  determinism 
into  the  most  ancient  oriental  fatalism.  The  lesson  of 
the  analysis  that  we  have  made  (even  on  the  com- 
pletely deterministic  hypothesis  with  which  we  started) 
forms  an  appeal  of  the  most  stimulating  sort  to  the 
energy  of  the  individual.  Even  the  dogged  resistance 
of  the  reactionary  conservative  to  changes  which  he 
cannot  hope  entirely  to  defeat  is  justified  and  shown 
to  be  effective.  He  retards  the  movement;  deflects 
it  a  little  by  the  concessions  he  extracts ;  gives  it  a  re- 
sultant momentum,  compounded  of  his  inertia  and  his 
adversaries'  speed ;  and  keeps  up,  in  short,  a  constant 
lateral  pressure,  which,  to  be  sure,  never  heads  it  round 
about,  but  brings  it  up  at  last  at  a  goal  far  to  the  right 
or  left  of  that  to  which  it  would  have  drifted  had  he 
allowed  it  to  drift  alone. 

I  now  pass  to  the  last  division  of  my  subject,  the 
function  of  the  environment  in  mental  evolution.  After 
what  I  have  already  said,  I  may  be  quite  concise. 
Here,  if  anywhere,  it  would  seem  at  first  sight  as  if  that 
school  must  be  right  which  makes  the  mind  passively 
plastic,  and  the  environment  actively  productive  of 
the  form  and  order  of  its  conceptions ;  which,  in  a 
word,  thinks  that  all  mental  progress  must  result  from 

1  Since  this  paper  was  written,  President  Cleveland  has  to  a  cer- 
tain extent  met  the  need.  But  who  can  doubt  that  if  he  had  certain 
other  qualities  which  he  has  not  yet  shown,  his  influence  would  have 
been  still  more  decisive?  (1896.) 


246         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

a  series  of  adaptive  changes,  in  the  sense  already  de- 
fined of  that  word.  We  know  what  a  vast  part  of  our 
mental  furniture  consists  of  purely  remembered,  not 
reasoned,  experience.  The  entire  field  of  our  habits 
and  associations  by  contiguity  belongs  here.  The 
entire  field  of  those  abstract  conceptions  which  were 
taught  us  with  the  language  into  which  we  were  born 
belongs  here  also.  And,  more  than  this,  there  is  rea- 
son to  think  that  the  order  of  '  outer  relations  '  expe- 
rienced by  the  individual  may  itself  determine  the  or- 
der in  which  the  general  characters  imbedded  therein 
shall  be  noticed  and  extracted  by  his  mind.1  The 
pleasures  and  benefits,  moreover,  which  certain  parts 
of  the  environment  yield,  and  the  pains  and  hurts 
which  other  parts  inflict,  determine  the  direction  of 
our  interest  and  our  attention,  and  so  decide  at  which 
points  the  accumulation  of  mental  experiences  shall 
begin.  It  might,  accordingly,  seem  as  if  there  were 
no  room  for  any  other  agency  than  this ;  as  if  the  dis- 
tinction we  have  found  so  useful  between  '  spontane- 
ous variation/  as  the  producer  of  changed  forms,  and 
the  environment,  as  their  preserver  and  destroyer, 
did  not  hold  in  the  case  of  mental  progress ;  as  if,  in 
a  word,  the  parallel  with  darwinism  might  no  longer 
obtain,  and  Spencer  might  be  quite  right  with  his 
fundamental  law  of  intelligence,  which  says,  "The 
cohesion  between  psychical  states  is  proportionate  to 
the  frequency  with  which  the  relation  between  the 
answering  external  pheonmena  has  been  repeated  in 
experience."  2 

1  That  is,  if  a  certain  general  character  be  rapidly  repeated  in  our 
outer  experience  with  a  number  of  strongly  contrasted  concomitants, 
it  will  be  sooner  abstracted  than  if  its  associates  are  invariable  or 
monotonous. 

8  Principles  of  Psychology,  i.  460.    See  also  pp.  463,  464,  500.    On 


Great  Men  and  their  Environment.     247 

But,  in  spite  of  all  these  facts,  I  have  no  hesitation 
whatever  in  holding  firm  to  the  darwinian  distinction 
even  here.  I  maintain  that  the  facts  in  question  are 
all  drawn  from  the  lower  strata  of  the  mind,  so  to 
speak,  —  from  the  sphere  of  its  least  evolved  functions, 
from  the  region  of  intelligence  which  man  possesses 
in  common  with  the  brutes.  And  I  can  easily  show 
that  throughout  the  whole  extent  of  those  mental  de- 
partments which  are  highest,  which  are  most  charac- 
teristically human,  Spencer's  law  is  violated  at  every 
step ;  and  that  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  new  concep- 
tions, emotions,  and  active  tendencies  which  evolve 
are  originally  produced  in  the  shape  of  random  im- 
ages, fancies,  accidental  out-births  of  spontaneous  va- 
riation in  the  functional  activity  of  the  excessively 
instable  human  brain,  which  the  outer  environment 
simply  confirms  or  refutes,  adopts  or  rejects,  preserves 
or  destroys,  —  selects,  in  short,  just  as  it  selects  mor- 
phological and  social  variations  due  to  molecular  acci- 
dents of  an  analogous  sort. 

It  is  one  of  the  tritest  of  truisms  that  human  intelli- 
gences of  a  simple  order  are  very  literal.  They  are 
slaves  of  habit,  doing  what  they  have  been  taught 
without  variation ;  dry,  prosaic,  and  matter-of-fact  in 
their  remarks ;  devoid  of  humor,  except  of  the  coarse 
physical  kind  which  rejoices  in  a  practical  joke ;  tak- 
ing the  world  for  granted;  and  possessing  in  their 
faithfulness  and  honesty  the  single  gift  by  which  they 
are  sometimes  able  to  warm  us  into  admiration.  But 


page  408  the  law  is  formulated  thus:  The  persistence  of  the  con- 
nection in  consciousness  is  proportionate  to  the  persistence  of  the 
outer  connection.  Mr.  Spencer  works  most  with  the  law  of  frequency. 
Either  law,  from  my  point  of  view,  is  false ;  but  Mr.  Spencer  ought 
not  to  think  them  synonymous. 


248          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

even  this  faithfulness  seems  to  have  a  sort  of  inorganic 
ring,  and  to  remind  us  more  of  the  immutable  proper- 
ties of  a  piece  of  inanimate  matter  than  of  the  stead- 
fastness of  a  human  will  capable  of  alternative  choice. 
When  we  descend  to  the  brutes,  all  these  peculiarities 
are  intensified.  No  reader  of  Schopenhauer  can  for- 
get his  frequent  allusions  to  the  trockener  ernst  of  dogs 
and  horses,  nor  to  their  ehrlichkeit.  And  every  no- 
ticer  of  their  ways  must  receive  a  deep  impression  of 
the  fatally  literal  character  of  the  few,  simple,  and 
treadmill-like  operations  of  their  minds. 

But  turn  to  the  highest  order  of  minds,  and  what  a 
change !  Instead  of  thoughts  of  concrete  things  pa- 
tiently following  one  another  in  a  beaten  track  of  ha- 
bitual suggestion,  we  have  the  most  abrupt  cross-cuts 
and  transitions  from  one  idea  to  another,  the  most 
rarefied  abstractions  and  discriminations,  the  most 
unheard-of  combinations  of  elements,  the  subtlest 
associations  of  analogy ;  in  a  word,  we  seem  suddenly 
introduced  into  a  seething  caldron  of  ideas,  where 
everything  is  fizzling  and  bobbing  about  in  a  state  of 
bewildering  activity,  where  partnerships  can  be  joined 
or  loosened  in  an  instant,  treadmill  routine  is  unknown, 
and  the  unexpected  seems  the  only  law.  Accord- 
ing to  the  idiosyncrasy  of  the  individual,  the  scintil- 
lations will  have  one  character  or  another.  They  will 
be  sallies  of  wit  and  humor ;  they  will  be  flashes  of 
poetry  and  eloquence ;  they  will  be  constructions  of 
dramatic  fiction  or  of  mechanical  device,  logical  or 
philosophic  abstractions,  business  projects,  or  scien- 
tific hypotheses,  with  trains  of  experimental  conse- 
quences based  thereon ;  they  will  be  musical  sounds, 
or  images  of  plastic  beauty  or  picturesqueness,  or  vis- 
ions of  moral  harmony.  But,  whatever  their  differ- 


Great  Men  and  their  Environment.      249 

ences  may  be,  they  will  all  agree  in  this,  —  that  their 
genesis  is  sudden  and,  as  it  were,  spontaneous.  That 
is  to  say,  the  same  premises  would  not,  in  the  mind  of 
another  individual,  have  engendered  just  that  conclu- 
sion ;  although,  when  the  conclusion  is  offered  to  the 
other  individual,  he  may  thoroughly  accept  and  enjoy 
it,  and  envy  the  brilliancy  of  him  to  whom  it  first 
occurred. 

To  Professor  Jevons  is  due  the  great  credit  of  hav- 
ing emphatically  pointed  out 1  how  the  genius  of  dis- 
covery depends  altogether  on  the  number  of  these 
random  notions  and  guesses  which  visit  the  investi- 
gator's mind.  To  be  fertile  in  hypotheses  is  the  first 
requisite,  and  to  be  willing  to  throw  them  away  the 
moment  experience  contradicts  them  is  the  next.  The 
Baconian  method  of  collating  tables  of  instances  may 
be  a  useful  aid  at  certain  times.  But  one  might  as 
well  expect  a  chemist's  note-book  to  write  down  the 
name  of  the  body  analyzed,  or  a  weather  table  to  sum 
itself  up  into  a  prediction  of  probabilities  of  its  own 
accord,  as  to  hope  that  the  mere  fact  of  mental  con- 
frontation with  a  certain  series  of  facts  will  be  suffi- 
cient to  make  any  brain  conceive  their  law.  The  con- 
ceiving of  the  law  is  a  spontaneous  variation  in  the 
strictest  sense  of  the  term.  It  flashes  out  of  one  brain, 
and  no  other,  because  the  instability  of  that  brain  is 
such  as  to  tip  and  upset  itself  in  just  that  particular 
direction.  But  the  important  thing  to  notice  is  that 
the  good  flashes  and  the  bad  flashes,  the  triumphant 
hypotheses  and  the  absurd  conceits,  are  on  an  exact 
equality  in  respect  of  their  origin.  Aristotle's  absurd 
Physics  and  his  immortal  Logic  flow  from  one  source  : 
the  forces  that  produce  the  one  produce  the  other. 
1  In  his  Principles  of  Science,  chapters  xi.  xii.  xxvi. 


250         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

When  walking  along  the  street,  thinking  of  the  blue 
sky  or  the  fine  spring  weather,  I  may  either  smile  at 
some  grotesque  whim  which  occurs  to  me,  or  I  may 
suddenly  catch  an  intuition  of  the  solution  of  a  long- 
unsolved  problem,  which  at  that  moment  was  far 
from  my  thoughts.  Both  notions  are  shaken  out  of 
the  same  reservoir,  —  the  reservoir  of  a  brain  in  which 
the  reproduction  of  images  in  the  relations  of  their 
outward  persistence  or  frequency  has  long  ceased  to 
be  the  dominant  law.  But  to  the  thought,  when  it  is 
once  engendered,  the  consecration  of  agreement  with 
outward  relations  may  come.  The  conceit  perishes 
in  a  moment,  and  is  forgotten.  The  scientific  hypoth- 
esis arouses  in  me  a  fever  of  desire  for  verification.  I 
read,  write,  experiment,  consult  experts.  Everything 
corroborates  my  notion,  which  being  then  published 
in  a  book  spreads  from  review  to  review  and  from 
mouth  to  mouth,  till  at  last  there  is  no  doubt  I  am 
enshrined  in  the  Pantheon  of  the  great  diviners  of 
nature's  ways.  The  environment  preserves  the  con- 
ception which  it  was  unable  to  produce  in  any  brain 
less  idiosyncratic  than  my  own. 

Now,  the  spontaneous  upsettings  of  brains  this  way 
and  that  at  particular  moments  into  particular  ideas 
and  combinations  are  matched  by  their  equally  spon- 
taneous permanent  tiltings  or  saggings  towards  de- 
terminate directions.  The  humorous  bent  is  quite 
characteristic ;  the  sentimental  one  equally  so.  And 
the  personal  tone  of  each  mind,  which  makes  it  more 
alive  to  certain  classes  of  experience  than  others, 
more  attentive  to  certain  impressions,  more  open  to 
certain  reasons,  is  equally  the  result  of  that  invisible 
and  unimaginable  play  of  the  forces  of  growth  within 
the  nervous  system  which,  irresponsibly  to  the  en- 


Great  Men  and  their  Environment.      251 

vironment,  makes  the  brain  peculiarly  apt  to  function 
in  a  certain  way.  Here  again  the  selection  goes  on. 
The  products  of  the  rrtind  with  the  determined  aesthetic 
bent  please  or  displease  the  community.  We  adopt 
Wordsworth,  and  grow  unsentimental  and  serene.  We 
are  fascinated  by  Schopenhauer,  and  learn  from  him 
the  true  luxury  of  woe.  The  adopted  bent  becomes 
a  ferment  in  the  community,  and  alters  its  tone.  The 
alteration  may  be  a  benefit  or  a  misfortune,  for  it  is 
{pace  Mr.  Allen)  a  differentiation  from  within,  which 
has  to  run  the  gauntlet  of  the  larger  environment's 
selective  power.  Civilized  Languedoc,  taking  the  tone 
of  its  scholars,  poets,  princes,  and  theologians,  fell  a 
prey  to  its  rude  Catholic  environment  in  the  Albigen- 
sian  crusade.  France  in  1792,  taking  the  tone  of  its 
St.  Justs  and  Marats,  plunged  into  its  long  career  of 
unstable  outward  relations.  Prussia  in  1806,  taking 
the  tone  of  its  Humboldts  and  its  Steins,  proved  itself 
in  the  most  signal  way  '  adjusted '  to  its  environment 
in  1872. 

Mr.  Spencer,  in  one  of  the  strangest  chapters  of 
his  Psychology,1  tries  to  show  the  necessary  order  in 
which  the  development  of  conceptions  in  the  human 
race  occurs.  No  abstract  conception  can  be  devel- 
oped, according  to  him,  until  the  outward  experi- 
ences have  reached  a  certain  degree  of  heterogeneity, 
definiteness,  coherence,  and  so  forth. 

"Thus  the  belief  in  an  unchanging  order,  the  belief  in 
law,  is  a  belief  of  which  the  primitive  man  is  absolutely 
incapable.  .  .  .  Experiences  such  as  he  receives  furnish 
but  few  data  for  the  conception  of  uniformity,  whether  as 
displayed  in  things  or  in  relations.  .  .  .  The  daily  impres- 

1  Part  viii.  chap.  iii. 


252          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

sions  which  the  savage  gets  yield  the  notion  very  imper- 
fectly, and  in  but  few  cases.  Of  all  the  objects  around,  — 
trees,  stones,  hills,  pieces  of  water,  clouds,  and  so  forth, 
—  most  differ  widely,  .  .  .  and  few  approach  complete 
likeness  so  nearly  as  to  make  discrimination  difficult. 
Even  between  animals  of  the  same  species  it  rarely  happens 
that,  whether  alive  or  dead,  they  are  presented  in  just  the 
same  attitudes.  ...  It  is  only  along  with  a  gradual  de- 
velopment of  the  arts  .  .  .  that  there  come  frequent 
experiences  of  perfectly  straight  lines  admitting  of  complete 
apposition,  bringing  the  perceptions  of  equality  and  in- 
equality. Still  more  devoid  is  savage  life  of  the  experiences 
which  generate  the  conception  of  the  uniformity  of  succes- 
sion. The  sequences  observed  from  hour  to  hour  and  day 
to  day  seem  anything  but  uniform ;  difference  is  a  far  more 
conspicuous  trait  among  them.  ...  So  that  if  we  contem- 
plate primitive  human  life  as  a  whole,  we  see  that  multi- 
formity of  sequence,  rather  than  uniformity,  is  the  notion 
which  it  tends  to  generate.  .  .  .  Only  as  fast  as  the  prac- 
tice of  the  arts  develops  the  idea  of  measure  can  the 
consciousness  of  uniformity  become  clear.  .  .  .  Those  con- 
ditions furnished  by  advancing  civilization  which  make 
possible  the  notion  of  uniformity  simultaneously  make  pos- 
sible the  notion  of  exactness.  .  .  .  Hence  the  primitive 
man  has  little  experience  which  cultivates  the  consciousness 
of  what  we  call  truth.  How  closely  allied  this  is  to  the 
consciousness  which  the  practice  of  the  arts  cultivates  is 
implied  even  in  language.  We  speak  of  a  true  surface  as 
well  as  a  true  statement.  Exactness  describes  perfection  in 
a  mechanical  fit,  as  well  as  perfect  agreement  between  the 
results  of  calculations." 

The  whole  burden  of  Mr.  Spencer's  book  is  to 
show  the  fatal  way  in  which  the  mind,  supposed 
passive,  is  moulded  by  its  experiences  of '  outer  rela- 


Great  Men  and  their  Environment.     253 

tions.'  In  this  chapter  the  yard-stick,  the  balance, 
the  chronometer,  and  other  machines  and  instruments 
come  to  figure  among  the  '  relations '  external  to  the 
mind.  Surely  they  are  so,  after  they  have  been  man- 
ufactured ;  but  only  because  of  the  preservative  power 
of  the  social  environment.  Originally  all  these  things 
and  all  other  institutions  were  flashes  of  genius  in  an 
individual  head,  of  which  the  outer  environment 
showed  no  sign.  Adopted  by  the  race  and  become 
its  heritage,  they  then  supply  instigations  to  new 
geniuses  whom  they  environ  to  make  new  inventions 
and  discoveries;  and  so  the  ball  of  progress  rolls. 
But  take  out  the  geniuses,  or  alter  their  idiosyncra- 
sies, and  what  increasing  uniformities  will  the  envi- 
ronment show?  We  defy  Mr.  Spencer  or  any  one 
else  to  reply. 

The  plain  truth  is  that  the  '  philosophy '  of  evolu- 
tion (as  distinguished  from  our  special  information 
about  particular  cases  of  change)  is  a  metaphysical 
creed,  and  nothing  else.  It  is  a  mood  of  contem- 
plation, an  emotional  attitude,  rather  than  a  system 
of  thought,  —  a  mood  which  is  old  as  the  world, 
and  which  no  refutation  of  any  one  incarnation  of  it 
(such  as  the  spencerian  philosophy)  will  dispel;  the 
mood  of  fatalistic  pantheism,  with  its  intuition  of  the 
One  and  All,  which  was,  and  is,  and  ever  shall  be, 
and  from  whose  womb  each  single  thing  proceeds. 
Far  be  it  from  us  to  speak  slightingly  here  of  so 
hoary  and  mighty  a  style  of  looking  on  the  world  as 
this.  What  we  at  present  call  scientific  discoveries 
had  nothing  to  do  with  bringing  it  to  birth,  nor  can 
one  easily  conceive  that  they  should  ever  give  it  its 
quietus,  no  matter  how  logically  incompatible  with 
its  spirit  the  ultimate  phenomenal  distinctions  which 


254          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

science  accumulates  should  turn  out  to  be.  It  can 
laugh  at  the  phenomenal  distinctions  on  which  science 
is  based,  for  it  draws  its  vital  breath  from  a  region 
which  —  whether  above  or  below  —  is  at  least  alto- 
gether different  from  that  in  which  science  dwells.  A 
critic,  however,  who  cannot  disprove  the  truth  of  the 
metaphysic  creed,  can  at  least  raise  his  voice  in  pro- 
test against  its  disguising  itself  in  '  scientific '  plumes. 
I  think  that  all  who  have  had  the  patience  to  follow 
me  thus  far  will  agree  that  the  spencerian  '  philos- 
ophy '  of  social  and  intellectual  progress  is  an  obsolete 
anachronism,  reverting  to  a  pre-darwinian  type  of 
thought,  just  as  the  spencerian  philosophy  of '  Force,' 
effacing  all  the  previous  distinctions  between  actual 
and  potential  energy,  momentum,  work,  force,  mass, 
etc.,  which  physicists  have  with  so  much  agony 
achieved,  carries  us  back  to  a  pre-galilean  age. 


The  Importance  of  Individuals.         255 


THE   IMPORTANCE   OF   INDIVIDUALS. 

THE  previous  Essay,  on  Great  Men,  etc.,  called 
forth  two  replies,  —  one  by  Mr.  Grant  Allen,  en- 
titled the  '  Genesis  of  Genius,'  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly, 
vol.  xlvii.  p.  351;  the  other  entitled  'Sociology  and 
Hero  Worship,'  by  Mr.  John  Fiske,  ibidem,  p.  75. 
The  article  which  follows  is  a  rejoinder  to  Mr.  Allen's 
article.  It  was  refused  at  the  time  by  the  Atlantic, 
but  saw  the  day  later  in  the  Open  Court  for  August, 
1890.  It  appears  here  as  a  natural  supplement  to 
the  foregoing  article,  on  which  it  casts  some  explana- 
tory light. 

Mr.  Allen's  contempt  for  hero-worship  is  based  on 
very  simple  considerations.  A  nation's  great  men, 
he  says,  are  but  slight  deviations  from  the  general 
level.  The  hero  is  merely  a  special  complex  of  the 
ordinary  qualities  of  his  race.  The  petty  differences 
impressed  upon  ordinary  Greek  minds  by  Plato  or 
Aristotle  or  Zeno,  are  nothing  at  all  compared  with 
the  vast  differences  between  every  Greek  mind  and 
every  Egyptian  or  Chinese  mind.  We  may  neglect 
them  in  a  philosophy  of  history,  just  as  in  calcu- 
lating the  impetus  of  a  locomotive  we  neglect  the 
extra  impetus  given  by  a  single  piece  of  better  coal. 
What  each  man  adds  is  but  an  infinitesimal  fraction 
compared  with  what  he  derives  from  his  parents,  of 


256          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

indirectly  from  his  earlier  ancestry.  And  if  what 
the  past  gives  to  the  hero  is  so  much  bulkier  than 
what  the  future  receives  from  him,  it  is  what  really 
calls  for  philosophical  treatment  The  problem  for 
the  sociologist  is  as  to  what  produces  the  average 
man ;  the  extraordinary  men  and  what  they  produce 
may  by  the  philosophers  be  taken  for  granted,  as  too 
trivial  variations  to  merit  deep  inquiry. 

Now,  as  I  wish  to  vie  with  Mr.  Allen's  unrivalled 
polemic  amiability  and  be  as  conciliatory  as  possible, 
I  will  not  cavil  at  his  facts  or  try  to  magnify  the  chasm 
between  an  Aristotle,  a  Goethe,  or  a  Napoleon  and 
the  average  level  of  their  respective  tribes.     Let  it  be 
as  small  as  Mr.  Allen  thinks.     All  that  I  object  to  is 
that  he  should  think  the  mere  size  of  a  difference  is 
capable  of  deciding  whether  that  difference  be  or  be 
not  a  fit  subject  for  philosophic  study.     Truly  enough, 
the  details  vanish  in  the  bird's-eye  view;  but  so  does 
the  bird's-eye  view  vanish  in  the  details.    Which  is  the 
right  point  of  view  for  philosophic  vision?     Nature 
gives  no  reply,  for  both  points  of  view,  being  equally 
real,  are  equally  natural ;   and  no  one  natural  reality 
per  se  is  any  more  emphatic  than  any  other.     Accen- 
tuation, foreground,  and  background  are  created  solely 
by  the  interested  attention  of  the  looker-on ;   and  if 
the  small  difference  between  the  genius  and  his  tribe 
interests  me  most,  while  the  large  one   between  that 
tribe  and  another  tribe  interests  Mr.  Allen,  our  con- 
troversy cannot  be  ended  until  a  complete  philosophy, 
accounting  for  all  differences  impartially,  shall  justify 
us  both. 

An  unlearned  carpenter  of  my  acquaintance  once 
said  in  my  hearing :  "  There  is  very  little  difference 
between  one  man  and  another ;  but  what  little  there 


The  Importance  of  Individuals.         257 

is,  is  very  important''  This  distinction  seems  to  me 
to  go  to  the  root  of  the  matter.  It  is  not  only  the  size 
of  the  difference  which  concerns  the  philosopher,  but 
also  its  place  and  its  kind.  An  inch  is  a  small  thing, 
but  we  know  the  proverb  about  an  inch  on  a  man's 
nose.  Messrs.  Allen  and  Spencer,  in  inveighing 
against  hero-worship,  are  thinking  exclusively  of  the 
size  of  the  inch ;  I,  as  a  hero-worshipper,  attend  to  its 
seat  and  function. 

Now,  there  is  a  striking  law  over  which  few  people 
seem  to  have  pondered.  It  is  this :  That  among  all 
the  differences  which  exist,  the  only  ones  that  interest 
us  strongly  are  those  we  do  not  take  for  granted.  We 
are  not  a  bit  elated  that  our  friend  should  have  two 
hands  and  the  power  of  speech,  and  should  practise 
the  matter-of-course  human  virtues ;  and  quite  as 
little  are  we  vexed  that  our  dog  goes  on  all  fours  and 
fails  to  understand  our  conversation.  Expecting  no 
more  from  the  latter  companion,  and  no  less  from 
the  former,  we  get  what  we  expect  and  are  satisfied. 
We  never  think  of  communing  with  the  dog  by  dis- 
course of  philosophy,  or  with  the  friend  by  head- 
scratching  or  the  throwing  of  crusts  to  be  snapped 
at.  But  if  either  dog  or  friend  fall  above  or  below 
the  expected  standard,  they  arouse  the  most  lively 
emotion.  On  our  brother's  vices  or  genius  we  never 
weary  of  descanting ;  to  his  bipedism  or  his  hairless 
skin  we  do  not  consecrate  a  thought.  What  he  says 
may  transport  us  ;  that  he  is  able  to  speak  at  all  leaves 
us  stone  cold.  The  reason  of  all  this  is  that  his  vir- 
tues and  vices  and  utterances  might,  compatibly  with 
the  current  range  of  variation  in  our  tribe,  be  just  the 
opposites  of  what  they  are,  while  his  zoologically 
human  attributes  cannot  possibly  go  astray.  There 

17 


258          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

is  thus  a  zone  of  insecurity  in  human  affairs  in  which 
all  the  dramatic  interest  lies ;  the  rest  belongs  to  the 
dead  machinery  of  the  stage.  This  is  the  formative 
zone,  the  part  not  yet  ingrained  into  the  race's  aver- 
age, not  yet  a  typical,  hereditary,  and  constant  factor 
of  the  social  community  in  which  it  occurs.  It  is  like 
the  soft  layer  beneath  the  bark  of  the  tree  in  which 
all  the  year's  growth  is  going  on.  Life  has  aban- 
doned the  mighty  trunk  inside,  which  stands  inert 
and  belongs  almost  to  the  inorganic  world.  Layer 
after  layer  of  human  perfection  separates  me  from 
the  central  Africans  who  pursued  Stanley  with  cries 
of  "  meat,  meat !  "  This  vast  difference  ought,  on 
Mr.  Allen's  principles,  to  rivet  my  attention  far  more 
than  the  petty  one  which  obtains  between  two  such 
birds  of  a  feather  as  Mr.  Allen  and  myself.  Yet 
while  I  never  feel  proud  that  the  sight  of  a  passer-by 
awakens  in  me  no  cannibalistic  waterings  of  the 
mouth,  I  am  free  to  confess  that  I  shall  feel  very 
proud  if  I  do  not  publicly  appear  inferior  to  Mr. 
Allen  in  the  conduct  of  this  momentous  debate.  To 
me  as  a  teacher  the  intellectual  gap  between  my 
ablest  and  my  dullest  student  counts  for  infinitely 
more  than  that  between  the  latter  and  the  amphioxus : 
indeed,  I  never  thought  of  the  latter  chasm  till  this 
moment.  Will  Mr.  Allen  seriously  say  that  this  is 
all  human  folly,  and  tweedledum  and  tweedledee? 

To  a  Veddah's  eyes  the  differences  between  two 
white  literary  men  seem  slight  indeed,  —  same  clothes, 
same  spectacles,  same  harmless  disposition,  same  habit 
of  scribbling  on  paper  and  poring  over  books,  etc. 
"  Just  two  white  fellows,"  the  Veddah  will  say,  "  with 
no  perceptible  difference."  But  what  a  difference  to 
the  literary  men  themselves !  Think,  Mr.  Allen,  of 


The  Importance  of  Individuals.         259 

confounding  our  philosophies  together  merely  because 
both  are  printed  in  the  same  magazines  and  are  indis- 
tinguishable to  the  eye  of  a  Veddah  !  Our  flesh  creeps 
at  the  thought. 

But  in  judging  of  history  Mr.  Allen  deliberately 
prefers  to  place  himself  at  the  Veddah's  point  of  view, 
and  to  see  things  en  gros  and  out  of  focus,  rather 
than  minutely.  It  is  quite  true  that  there  are  things 
and  differences  enough  to  be  seen  either  way.  But 
which  are  the  humanly  important  ones,  those  most 
worthy  to  arouse  our  interest,  —  the  large  distinctions 
or  the  small  ?  In  the  answer  to  this  question  lies  the 
whole  divergence  of  the  hero-worshippers  from  the  so- 
ciologists. As  I  said  at  the  outset,  it  is  merely  a  quar- 
rel of  emphasis ;  and  the  only  thing  I  can  do  is  to 
state  my  personal  reasons  for  the  emphasis  I  prefer. 

The  zone  of  the  individual  differences,  and  of  the 
social  '  twists '  which  by  common  confession  they 
initiate,  is  the  zone  of  formative  processes,  the  dy- 
namic belt  of  quivering  uncertainty,  the  line  where 
past  and  future  meet.  It  is  the  theatre  of  all  we  do 
not  take  for  granted,  the  stage  of  the  living  drama 
of  life ;  and  however  narrow  its  scope,  it  is  roomy 
enough  to  lodge  the  whole  range  of  human  passions. 
The  sphere  of  the  race's  average,  on  the  contrary,  no 
matter  how  large  it  may  be,  is  a  dead  and  stagnant 
thing,  an  achieved  possession,  from  which  all  inse- 
curity has  vanished.  Like  the  trunk  of  a  tree,  it  has 
been  built  up  by  successive  concretions  of  successive 
active  zones.  The  moving  present  in  which  we  live 
with  its  problems  and  passions,  its  individual  rivalries, 
victories,  and  defeats,  will  soon  pass  over  to  the  ma- 
jority and  leave  its  small  deposit  on  this  static  mass, 
to  make  room  for  fresh  actors  and  a  newer  play. 


260         Essays  in   Popular  Philosophy. 

And  though  it  may  be  true,  as  Mr.  Spencer  predicts, 
that  each  later  zone  shall  fatally  be  narrower  than  its 
forerunners ;  and  that  when  the  ultimate  lady-like  tea- 
table  elysium  of  the  Data  of  Ethics  shall  prevail,  such 
questions  as  the  breaking  of  eggs  at  the  large  or  the 
small  end  will  span  the  whole  scope  of  possible  human 
warfare,  —  still  even  in  this  shrunken  and  enfeebled 
generation,  spatio  aetatis  defessa  vetusto,  what  eager- 
ness there  will  be  !  Battles  and  defeats  will  occur,  the 
victors  will  be  glorified  and  the  vanquished  dishonored 
just  as  in  the  brave  days  of  yore,  the  human  heart 
still  withdrawing  itself  from  the  much  it  has  in  safe  pos- 
session, and  concentrating  all  its  passion  upon  those 
evanescent  possibilities  of  fact  which  still  quiver  in 
fate's  scale. 

And  is  not  its  instinct  right?  Do  not  we  here 
grasp  the  race-differences  in  the  making,  and  catch 
the  only  glimpse  it  is  allotted  to  us  to  attain  of  the 
working  units  themselves,  of  whose  differentiating 
action  the  race-gaps  form  but  the  stagnant  sum? 
What  strange  inversion  of  scientific  procedure  does 
Mr.  Allen  practise  when  he  teaches  us  to  neglect 
elements  and  attend  only  to  aggregate  resultants? 
On  the  contrary,  simply  because  the  active  ring, 
whatever  its  bulk,  is  elementary,  I  hold  that  the  study 
of  its  conditions  (be  these  never  so  'proximate')  is 
the  highest  of  topics  for  the  social  philosopher.  If 
individual  variations  determine  its  ups  and  downs  and 
hair-breadth  escapes  and  twists  and  turns,  as  Mr. 
Allen  and  Mr.  Fiske  both  admit,  Heaven  forbid  us 
from  tabooing  the  study  of  these  in  favor  of  the 
average  !  On  the  contrary,  let  us  emphasize  these, 
and  the  importance  of  these;  and  in  picking  out 
from  history  our  heroes,  and  communing  with  their 


The  Importance  of  Individuals.         261 

kindred  spirits,  —  in  imagining  as  strongly  as  possible 
what  differences  their  individualities  brought  about  in 
this  world,  while  its  surface  was  still  plastic  in  their 
hands,  and  what  whilom  feasibilities  they  made  im- 
possible, —  each  one  of  us  may  best  fortify  and  in- 
spire what  creative  energy  may  lie  in  his  own  soul.1 

This  is  the  lasting  justification  of  hero-worship,  and 
the  pooh-poohing  of  it  by  'sociologists'  is  the  ever- 
lasting excuse  for  popular  indifference  to  their  gen- 
eral laws  and  averages.  The  difference  between  an 
America  rescued  by  a  Washington  or  by  a  '  Jenkins ' 
may,  as  Mr.  Allen  says,  be  'little,'  but  it  is,  in  the 
words  of  my  carpenter  friend,  '  important.'  Some 
organizing  genius  must  in  the  nature  of  things  have 
emerged  from  the  French  Revolution;  but  what 
Frenchman  will  affirm  it  to  have  been  an  accident  of 
no  consequence  that  he  should  have  had  the  super- 
numerary idiosyncrasies  of  a  Bonaparte?  What  ani- 
mal, domestic  or  wild,  will  call  it  a  matter  of  no 
moment  that  scarce  a  word  of  sympathy  with  brutes 
should  have  survived  from  the  teachings  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth? 

The  preferences  of  sentient  creatures  are  what 
create  the  importance  of  topics.  They  are  the  abso- 
lute and  ultimate  law-giver  here.  And  I  for  my  part 
cannot  but  consider  the  talk  of  the  contemporary 
sociological  school  about  averages  and  general  laws 
and  predetermined  tendencies,  with  its  obligatory 
undervaluing  of  the  importance  of  individual  differ- 

1  M.  G.  Tarde's  book  (itself  a  work  of  genius),  Les  Lois  de 
1'Imitation,  Etude  Sociologique  (2me  Edition,  Paris,  Alcan,  1895). 
is  the  best  possible  commentary  on  this  text,  — '  invention  '  on  the 
one  hand,  and '  imitation '  on  the  other,  being  for  this  author  the  two 
sole  factors  of  social  change. 


262          Essays  in   Popular  Philosophy. 

ences,  as  the  most  pernicious  and  immoral  of  fatal- 
isms. Suppose  there  is  a  social  equilibrium  fated  to 
be,  whose  is  it  to  be,  —  that  of  your  preference,  or 
mine  ?  There  lies  the  question  of  questions,  and  it 
is  one  which  no  study  of  averages  can  decide. 


On  some   Hegelisms.  263 


ON   SOME   HEGELISMS.1 

WE  are  just  now  witnessing  a  singular  phenome- 
non in  British  and  American  philosophy. 
Hegelism,  so  defunct  on  its  native  soil  that  I  believe 
but  a  single  youthful  disciple  of  the  school  is  to  be 
counted  among  the  privat-docenten  and  younger  pro- 
fessors of  Germany,  and  whose  older  champions  are 
all  passing  off  the  stage,  has  found  among  us  so  zeal- 
ous and  able  a  set  of  propagandists  that  to-day  it 
may  really  be  reckoned  one  of  the  most  powerful 
influences  of  the  time  in  the  higher  walks  of  thought. 
And  there  is  no  doubt  that,  as  a  movement  of  reac- 
tion against  the  traditional  British  empiricism,  the 
hegelian  influence  represents  expansion  and  free- 
dom, and  is  doing  service  of  a  certain  kind.  Such 
service,  however,  ought  not  to  make  us  blindly  indul- 
gent. Hegel's  philosophy  mingles  mountain-loads  of 
corruption  with  its  scanty  merits,  and  must,  now  that 
it  has  become  quasi-official,  make  ready  to  defend 
itself  as  well  as  to  attack  others.  It  is  with  no  hope 
of  converting  independent  thinkers,  but  rather  with 
the  sole  aspiration  of  showing  some  chance  youth- 
ful disciple  that  there  is  another  point  of  view  .in 
philosophy  that  I  fire  this  skirmisher's  shot,  which 
may,  I  hope,  soon  be  followed  by  somebody  else's 
heavier  musketry. 

1  Reprinted  from  Mind,  April,  1882. 


264         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

The  point  of  view  I  have  in  mind  will  become 
clearer  if  I  begin  with  a  few  preparatory  remarks 
on  the  motives  and  difficulties  of  philosophizing  in 
general. 

To  show  that  the  real  is  identical  with  the  ideal 
may  roughly  be  set  down  as  the  mainspring  of  philo- 
sophic activity.  The  atomic  and  mechanical  concep- 
tion of  the  world  is  as  ideal  from  the  point  of  view  of 
some  of  our  faculties  as  the  teleological  one  is  from 
the  point  of  view  of  others.  In  the  realm  of  every 
ideal  we  can  begin  anywhere  and  roam  over  the  field, 
each  term  passing  us  to  its  neighbor,  each  member 
calling  for  the  next,  and  our  reason  rejoicing  in  its 
glad  activity.  Where  the  parts  of  a  conception  seem 
thus  to  belong  together  by  inward  kinship,  where  the 
whole  is  defined  in  a  way  congruous  with  our  powers 
of  reaction,  to  see  is  to  approve  and  to  understand. 

Much  of  the  real  seems  at  the  first  blush  to  follow 
a  different  law.  The  parts  seem,  as  Hegel  has  said,  to 
be  shot  out  of  a  pistol  at  us.  Each  asserts  itself  as  a 
simple  brute  fact,  uncalled  for  by  the  rest,  which,  so 
far  as  we  can  see,  might  even  make  a  better  system 
without  it.  Arbitrary,  foreign,  jolting,  discontinu- 
ous—  are  the  adjectives  by  which  we  are  tempted 
to  describe  it.  And  yet  from  out  the  bosom  of  it  a 
partial  ideality  constantly  arises  which  keeps  alive  our 
aspiration  that  the  whole  may  some  day  be  construed 
in  ideal  form.  Not  only  do  the  materials  lend  them- 
selvesunder  certain  circumstances  to  aesthetic  manipula- 
tion, but  underlying  their  worst  disjointedness  are  three 
great  continua  in  which  for  each  of  us  reason's  ideal 
is  actually  reached.  I  mean  the  continua  of  memory 
or  personal  consciousness,  of  time  and  of  space.  In 


On  some  Hegelisms.  265 

these  great  matrices  of  all  we  know,  we  are  absolutely 
at  home.  The  things  we  meet  are  many,  and  yet  are 
one ;  each  is  itself,  and  yet  all  belong  together ;  con- 
tinuity reigns,  yet  individuality  is  not  lost. 

Consider,  for  example,  space.  It  is  a  unit.  No 
force  can  in  any  way  break,  wound,  or  tear  it.  It  has 
no  joints  between  which  you  can  pass  your  amputat- 
ing knife,  for  it  penetrates  the  knife  and  is  not  split. 
Try  to  make  a  hole  in  space  by  annihilating  an  inch 
of  it.  To  make  a  hole  you  must  drive  something  else 
through.  But  what  can  you  drive  through  space  ex- 
cept what  is  itself  spatial  ? 

But  notwithstanding  it  is  this  very  paragon  of  unity, 
space  in  its  parts  contains  an  infinite  variety,  and  the 
unity  and  the  variety  do  not  contradict  each  other, 
for  they  obtain  in  different  respects.  The  one  is  the 
whole,  the  many  are  the  parts.  Each  part  is  one 
again,  but  only  one  fraction ;  and  part  lies  beside  part 
in  absolute  nextness,  the  very  picture  of  peace  and 
non-contradiction.  It  is  true  that  the  space  between 
two  points  both  unites  and  divides  them,  just  as  the 
bar  of  a  dumb-bell  both  unites  and  divides  the  two 
balls.  But  the  union  and  the  division  are  not  secun- 
dum  idem  :  it  divides  them  by  keeping  them  out  of 
the  space  between,  it  unites  them  by  keeping  them 
out  of  the  space  beyond  ;  so  the  double  function  pre- 
sents no  inconsistency.  Self-contradiction  in  space 
could  only  ensue  if  one  part  tried  to  oust  another 
from  its  position  ;  but  the  notion  of  such  an  absurdity 
vanishes  in  the  framing,  and  cannot  stay  to  vex  the 
mind.1  Beyond  the  parts  we  see  or  think  at  any 

1  The  seeming  contradiction  between  the  infinitude  of  space  and 
the  fact  that  it  is  all  finished  and  given  and  there,  can  be  got  over 
in  more  than  one  way.  The  simplest  way  is  by  idealism,  which  dis- 


266          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

given  time  extend  further  parts;  but  the  beyond  is 
homogeneous  with  what  is  embraced,  and  follows  the 
same  law;  so  that  no  surprises,  no  foreignness,  can 
ever  emerge  from  space's  womb. 

Thus  with  space  our  intelligence  is  absolutely  inti- 
mate; it  is  rationality  and  transparency  incarnate. 
The  same  may  be  said  of  the  ego  and  of  time.  But 
if  for  simplicity's  sake  we  ignore  them,  we  may  truly 
say  that  when  we  desiderate  rational  knowledge  of 
the  world  the  standard  set  by  our  knowledge  of  space 
is  what  governs  our  desire.1  Cannot  the  breaks,  the 
jolts,  the  margin  of  foreignness,  be  exorcised  from 
other  things  and  leave  them  unitary  like  the  space 
they  fill?  Could  this  be  done,  the  philosophic  king- 
dom of  heaven  would  be  at  hand. 

But  the  moment  we  turn  to  the  material  qualities 

tinguishes  between  space  as  actual  and  space  as  potential.  For  ideal- 
ism, space  only  exists  so  far  as  it  is  represented ;  but  all  actually  rep- 
resented spaces  are  finite ;  it  is  only  possibly  representable  spaces 
that  are  infinite. 

1  Not  only  for  simplicity's  sake  do  we  select  space  as  the  paragon 
of  a  rationalizing  continuum.  Space  determines  the  relations  of  the 
items  that  enter  it  in  a  far  more  intricate  way  than  does  time  ;  in  a 
far  more  fixed  way  than  does  the  ego.  By  this  last  clause  I  mean 
that  if  things  are  in  space  at  all,  they  must  conform  to  geometry ; 
while  the  being  in  an  ego  at  all  need  not  make  them  conform  to  logic 
or  any  other  manner  of  rationality.  Under  the  sheltering  wings  of  a 
self  the  matter  of  unreason  can  lodge  itself  as  safely  as  any  other 
kind  of  content.  One  cannot  but  respect  the  devoutness  of  the  ego- 
worship  of  some  of  our  English-writing  Hegelians,  But  at  the  same 
time  one  cannot  help  fearing  lest  the  monotonous  contemplation  of 
so  barren  a  principle  as  that  of  the  pure  formal  self  (which,  be  it 
never  so  essential  a  condition  of  the  existence  of  a  world  of  organ- 
ized experience  at  all,  must  notwithstanding  take  its  own  character 
from,  not  give  the  character  to,  the  separate  empirical  data  over 
which  its  mantle  is  cast),  one  cannot  but  fear,  I  say,  lest  the  religion 
of  the  transcendental  ego  should,  like  all  religions  of  the  '  one  thing 
needful,"  end  by  sterilizing  and  occluding  the  minds  of  its  believers. 


On  some  Hegelisms.  267 

of  being,  we  find  the  continuity  ruptured  on  every 
side.  A  fearful  jolting  begins.  Even  if  we  simplify 
the  world  by  reducing  it  to  its  mechanical  bare  poles, 
—  atoms  and  their  motions,  —  the  discontinuity  is 
bad  enough.  The  laws  of  clash,  the  effects  of  dis- 
tance upon  attraction  and  repulsion,  all  seem  arbi- 
trary collocations  of  data.  The  atoms  themselves  are 
so  many  independent  facts,  the  existence  of  any  one 
of  which  in  no  wise  seems  to  involve  the  existence 
of  the  rest.  We  have  not  banished  discontinuity,  we 
have  only  made  it  finer-grained.  And  to  get  even 
that  degree  of  rationality  into  the  universe  we  have 
had  to  butcher  a  great  part  of  its  contents.  The 
secondary  qualities  we  stripped  off  from  the  reality 
and  swept  into  the  dust-bin  labelled  '  subjective  illu- 
sion,' still  as  such  are  facts,  and  must  themselves  be 
rationalized  in  some  way. 

But  when  we  deal  with  facts  believed  to  be  purely 
subjective,  we  are  farther  than  ever  from  the  goal. 
We  have  not  now  the  refuge  of  distinguishing  be- 
tween the  '  reality '  and  its  appearances.  Facts  of 
thought  being  the  only  facts,  differences  of  thought 
become  the  only  differences,  and  identities  of  thought 
the  only  identities  there  are.  Two  thoughts  that  seem 
different  are  different  to  all  eternity.  We  can  no 
longer  speak  of  heat  and  light  being  reconciled  in 
any  tertimn  quid  like  wave-motion.  For  motion  is 
motion,  and  light  is  light,  and  heat  heat  forever,  and 
their  discontinuity  is  as  absolute  as  their  existence. 
Together  with  the  other  attributes  and  things  we 
conceive,  they  make  up  Plato's  realm  of  immutable 
ideas.  Neither  per  se  calls  for  the  other,  hatches  it 
out,  is  its  '  truth,'  creates  it,  or  has  any  sort  of  inward 
community  with  it  except  that  of  being  comparable 


268          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

in  an  ego  and  found  more  or  less  differing,  or  more 
or  less  resembling,  as  the  case  may  be.  The  world 
of  qualities  is  a  world  of  things  almost  wholly  discon- 
tinuous inter  se.  Each  only  says,  "  I  am  that  I  am," 
and  each  says  it  on  its  own  account  and  with  abso- 
lute monotony.  The  continuities  of  which  they/w- 
take,  in.  Plato's  phrase,  the  ego,  space,  and  time,  are 
for  most  of  them  the  only  grounds  of  union  they 
possess. 

It  might  seem  as  if  in  the  mere  '  partaking '  there 
lay  a  contradiction  of  the  discontinuity.  If  the  white 
must  partake  of  space,  the  heat  of  time,  and  so 
forth,  — do  not  whiteness  and  space,  heat  and  time, 
mutually  call  for  or  help  to  create  each  other? 

Yes ;  a  few  such  d  priori  couplings  must  be 
admitted.  They  are  the  axioms :  no  feeling  except 
as  occupying  some  space  and  time,  or  as  a  moment 
in  some  ego ;  no  motion  but  of  something  moved ; 
no  thought  but  of  an  object;  no  time  without  a 
previous  time,  —  and  the  like.  But  they  are  limited 
in  number,  and  they  obtain  only  between  exces- 
sively broad  genera  of  concepts,  and  leave  quite 
undetermined  what  the  specifications  of  those  genera 
shall  be.  What  feeling  shall  fill  this  time,  what  sub- 
stance execute  this  motion,  what  qualities  combine  in 
this  being,  are  as  much  unanswered  questions  as  if 
the  metaphysical  axioms  never  existed  at  all. 

The  existence  of  such  syntheses  as  they  are  does 
then  but  slightly  mitigate  the  jolt,  jolt,  jolt  we  get 
when  we  pass  over  the  facts  of  the  world.  Every- 
where indeterminate  variables,  subject  only  to  these 
few  vague  enveloping  laws,  independent  in  all  be- 
sides,—  such  seems  the  truth. 

In  yet  another  way,  too,  ideal  and  real  are  so  far 


On  some  Hegelisms.  269 

apart  that  their  conjunction  seems  quite  hopeless. 
To  eat  our  cake  and  have  it,  to  lose  our  soul  and 
save  it,  to  enjoy  the  physical  privileges  of  selfishness 
and  the  moral  luxury  of  altruism  at  the  same  time, 
would  be  the  ideal.  But  the  real  offers  us  these 
terms  in  the  shape  of  mutually  exclusive  alternatives 
of  which  only  one  can  be  true  at  once ;  so  that  we 
must  choose,  and  in  choosing  murder  one  possibility. 
The  wrench  is  absolute:  "Either — or!"  Just  as 
whenever  I  bet  a  hundred  dollars  on  an  event,  there 
comes  an  instant  when  I  am  a  hundred  dollars  richer 
or  poorer  without  any  intermediate  degrees  passed 
over;  just  as  my  wavering  between  a  journey  to 
Portland  or  to  New  York  does  not  carry  me  from 
Cambridge  in  a  resultant  direction  in  which  both 
motions  are  compounded,  say  to  Albany,  but  at  a 
given  moment  results  in  the  conjunction  of  reality  in 
all  its  fulness  for  one  alternative  and  impossibility  in 
all  its  fulness  for  the  other,  —  so  the  bachelor  joys 
are  utterly  lost  from  the  face  of  being  for  the  married 
man,  who  must  henceforward  find  his  account  in 
something  that  is  not  them  but  is  good  enough  to 
make  him  forget  them ;  so  the  careless  and  irrespon- 
sible living  in  the  sunshine,  the  'unbuttoning  after 
supper  and  sleeping  upon  benches  in  the  afternoon,' 
are  stars  that  have  set  upon  the  path  of  him  who  in 
good  earnest  makes  himself  a  moralist.  The  transi- 
tions are  abrupt,  absolute,  truly  shot  out  of  a  pistol ; 
for  while  many  possibilities  are  called,  the  few  that  are 
chosen  are  chosen  in  all  their  sudden  completeness. 

Must  we  then  think  that  the  world  that  fills  space 
and  time  can  yield  us  no  acquaintance  of  that  high 
and  perfect  type  yielded  by  empty  space  and  time 
themselves?  Is  what  unity  there  is  in  the  world 


270         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

mainly  derived  from  the  fact  that  the  world  is  in 
space  and  time  and  'partakes'  of  them?  Can  no 
vision  of  it  forestall  the  facts  of  it,  or  know  from 
some  fractions  the  others  before  the  others  have 
arrived?  Are  there  real  logically  indeterminate  pos- 
sibilities which  forbid  there  being  any  equivalent 
for  the  happening  of  it  all  but  the  happening  itself? 
Can  we  gain  no  anticipatory  assurance  that  what  is  to 
come  will  have  no  strangeness?  Is  there  no  substi- 
tute, in  short,  for  life  but  the  living  itself  in  all  its  long- 
drawn  weary  length  and  breadth  and  thickness  ? 

In  the  negative  reply  to  all  these  questions,  a 
modest  common-sense  finds  no  difficulty  in  acquiesc- 
ing. To  such  a  way  of  thinking  the  notion  of  '  par- 
taking '  has  a  deep  and  real  significance.  Whoso  par- 
takes of  a  thing  enjoys  his  share,  and  comes  into 
contact  with  the  thing  and  its  other  partakers.  But 
he  claims  no  more.  His  share  in  no  wise  negates 
the  thing  or  their  share;  nor  does  it  preclude  his 
possession  of  reserved  and  private  powers  with  which 
they  have  nothing  to  do,  and  which  are  not  all 
absorbed  in  the  mere  function  of  sharing.  Why  may 
not  the  world  be  a  sort  of  republican  banquet  of  this 
sort,  where  all  the  qualities  of  being  respect  one 
another's  personal  sacredness,  yet  sit  at  the  common 
table  of  space  and  time  ? 

To  me  this  view  seems  deeply  probable.  Things 
cohere,  but  the  act  of  cohesion  itself  implies  but  few 
conditions,  and  leaves  the  rest  of  their  qualifications 
indeterminate.  As  the  first  three  notes  of  a  tune 
comport  many  endings,  all  melodious,  but  the  tune  is 
not  named  till  a  particular  ending  has  actually  come, 
—  so  the  parts  actually  known  of  the  universe  may 
comport  many  ideally  possible  complements.  But  as 


On  some  Hegelisms.  271 

the  facts  are  not  the  complements,  so  the  knowledge  of 
the  one  is  not  the  knowledge  of  the  other  in  anything 
but  the  few  necessary  elements  of  which  all  must  par- 
take in  order  to  be  together  at  all.  Why,  if  one  act  of 
knowledge  could  from  one  point  take  in  the  total  per- 
spective, with  all  mere  possibilities  abolished,  should 
there  ever  have  been  anything  more  than  that  act? 
Why  duplicate  it  by  the  tedious  unrolling,  inch  by 
inch,  of  the  foredone  reality?  No  answer  seems  possi- 
ble. On  the  other  hand,  if  we  stipulate  only  a  partial 
community  of  partially  independent  powers,  we  see 
perfectly  why  no  one  part  controls  the  whole  view,  but 
each  detail  must  come  and  be  actually  given,  before, 
in  any  special  sense,  it  can  be  said  to  be  determined 
at  all.  This  is  the  moral  view,  the  view  that  gives  to 
other  powers  the  same  freedom  it  would  have  itself, 
—  not  the  ridiculous  '  freedom  to  do  right,'  which  in 
my  mouth  can  only  mean  the  freedom  to  do  as  I  think 
right,  but  the  freedom  to  do  as  they  think  right,  or 
wrong  either.  After  all,  what  accounts  do  the  nether- 
most bounds  of  the  universe  owe  to  me  ?  By  what 
insatiate  conceit  and  lust  of  intellectual  despotism  do 
I  arrogate  the  right  to  know  their  secrets,  and  from 
my  philosophic  throne  to  play  the  only  airs  they  shall 
march  to,  as  if  I  were  the  Lord's  anointed?  Is  not 
my  knowing  them  at  all  a  gift  and  not  a  right?  And 
shall  it  be  given  before  they  are  given  ?  Data!  gifts! 
something  to  be  thankful  for  !  It  is  a  gift  that  we  can 
approach  things  at  all,  and,  by  means  of  the  time  and 
space  of  which  our  minds  and  they  partake,  alter  our 
actions  so  as  to  meet  them. 

There  are  '  bounds  of  ord'nance '  set  for  all  things, 
where  they  must  pause  or  rue  it.  '  Facts '  are  the 
bounds  of  human  knowledge,  set  for  it,  not  by  it. 


272          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

Now,  to  a  mind  like  Hegel's  such  pusillanimous 
twaddle  sounds  simply  loathsome.  Bounds  that  we 
can't  overpass  !  Data !  facts  that  say,  "  Hands  off, 
till  we  are  given  "  !  possibilities  we  can't  control !  a 
banquet  of  which  we  merely  share  !  Heavens,  this  is 
intolerable ;  such  a  world  is  no  world  for  a  philosopher 
to  have  to  do  with.  He  must  have  all  or  nothing.  If 
the  world  cannot  be  rational  in  my  sense,  in  the  sense 
of  unconditional  surrender,  I  refuse  to  grant  that  it  is 
rational  at  all.  It  is  pure  incoherence,  a  chaos,  a 
nulliverse,  to  whose  haphazard  sway  I  will  not  truckle. 
But,  no  !  this  is  not  the  world.  The  world  is  philos- 
ophy's own,  —  a  single  block,  of  which,  if  she  once 
get  her  teeth  on  any  part,  the  whole  shall  inevitably 
become  her  prey  and  feed  her  all-devouring  theoretic 
maw.  Naught  shall  be  but  the  necessities  she  cre- 
ates and  impossibilities ;  freedom  shall  mean  freedom 
to  obey  her  will ;  ideal  and  actual  shall  be  one :  she, 
and  I  as  her  champion,  will  be  satisfied  on  no  lower 
terms. 

The  insolence  of  sway,  the  v/Sptf  on  which  gods 
take  vengeance,  is  in  temporal  and  spiritual  matters 
usually  admitted  to  be  a  vice.  A  Bonaparte  and  a 
Philip  II.  are  called  monsters.  But  when  an  intellect 
is  found  insatiate  enough  to  declare  that  all  existence 
must  bend  the  knee  to  its  requirements,  we  do  not  call 
its  owner  a  monster,  but  a  philosophic  prophet.  May 
not  this  be  all  wrong?  Is  there  any  one  of  our  func- 
tions exempted  from  the  common  lot  of  liability  to 
excess  ?  And  where  everything  else  must  be  contented 
with  its  part  in  the  universe,  shall  the  theorizing  fac- 
ulty ride  rough-shod  over  the  whole? 

I  confess  I  can  see  no  d  priori  reason  for  the  excep- 
tion. He  who  claims  it  must  be  judged  by  the  con- 


On  some  Hegelisms.  273 

sequences  of  his  acts,  and  by  them  alone.  Let  Hegel 
then  confront  the  universe  with  his  claim,  and  see  how 
he  can  make  the  two  match. 

The  universe  absolutely  refuses  to  let  him  travel 
without  jolt.  Time,  space,  and  his  ego  are  continu- 
ous ;  so  are  degrees  of  heat,  shades  of  light  and  color, 
and  a  few  other  serial  things ;  so  too  do  potatoes  call 
for  salt,  and  cranberries  for  sugar,  in  the  taste  of  one 
who  knows  what  salt  and  sugar  are.  But  on  the  whole 
there  is  nought  to  soften  the  shock  of  surprise  to  his 
intelligence,  as  it  passes  from  one  quality  of  being  to 
another.  Light  is  not  heat,  heat  is  not  light;  and  to 
him  who  holds  the  one  the  other  is  not  given  till  it 
give  itself.  Real  being  comes  moreover  and  goes 
from  any  concept  at  its  own  sweet  will,  with  no  per- 
mission asked  of  the  conceiver.  In  despair  must 
Hegel  lift  vain  hands  of  imprecation;  and  since  he 
will  take  nothing  but  the  whole,  he  must  throw  away 
even  the  part  he  might  retain,  and  call  the  nature  of 
things  an  absolute  muddle  and  incoherence. 

But,  hark  !  What  wondrous  strain  is  this  that  steals 
upon  his  ear?  Incoherence  itself,  may  it  not  be  the 
very  sort  of  coherence  I  require?  Muddle  !  is  it  any- 
thing but  a  peculiar  sort  of  transparency?  Is  not 
jolt  passage?  Is  friction  other  than  a  kind  of  lubri- 
cation? Is  not  a  chasm  a  filling?  —  a  queer  kind  of 
rilling,  but  a  filling  still.  Why  seek  for  a  glue  to  hold 
things  together  when  their  very  falling  apart  is  the 
only  glue  you  need?  Let  all  that  negation  which 
seemed  to  disintegrate  the  universe  be  the  mortar 
that  combines  it,  and  the  problem  stands  solved. 
The  paradoxical  character  of  the  notion  could  not 
fail  to  please  a  mind  monstrous  even  in  its  native 

18 


•274         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

Germany,  where  mental  excess  is  endemic.  Richard, 
for  a  moment  brought  to  bay,  is  himself  again.  He 
vaults  into  the  saddle,  and  from  that  time  his  career 
is  that  of  a  philosophic  desperado,  —  one  series  of 
outrages  upon  the  chastity  of  thought. 

And  can  we  not  ourselves  sympathize  with  his 
mood  in  some  degree?  The  old  receipts  of  squeez- 
ing the  thistle  and  taking  the  bull  by  the  horns  have 
many  applications.  An  evil  frankly  accepted  loses 
half  its  sting  and  all  its  terror.  The  Stoics  had  their 
cheap  and  easy  way  of  dealing  with  evil.  Call  your 
woes  goods,  they  said ;  refuse  to  call  your  lost  bless- 
ings by  that  name,  —  and  you  are  happy.  So  of  the 
unintelligibilities :  call  them  means  of  intelligibility, 
and  what  further  do  you  require?  There  is  even  a 
more  legitimate  excuse  than  that.  In  the  exceeding- 
ness  of  the  facts  of  life  over  our  formulas  lies  a  stand- 
ing temptation  at  certain  times  to  give  up  trying  to 
say  anything  adequate  about  them,  and  to  take  refuge 
in  wild  and  whirling  words  which  but  confess  our  im- 
potence before  their  ineffability.  Thus  Baron  Bunsen 
writes  to  his  wife:  "Nothing  is  near  but  the  far; 
nothing  true  but  the  highest;  nothing  credible  but 
the  inconceivable ;  nothing  so  real  as  the  impossible ; 
nothing  clear  but  the  deepest;  nothing  so  visible  as 
the  invisible ;  and  no  life  is  there  but  through  death." 
Of  these  ecstatic  moments  the  credo  quia  impossibile 
is  the  classical  expression.  Hegel's  originality  lies 
in  his  making  their  mood  permanent  and  sacramental, 
and  authorized  to  supersede  all  others,  —  not  as  a 
mystical  bath  and  refuge  for  feeling  when  tired  rea- 
son sickens  of  her  intellectual  responsibilities  (thank 
Heaven  !  that  bath  is  always  ready),  but  as  the  very 
form  of  intellectual  responsibility  itself. 


On  some  Hegelisms.  275 

And  now  after  this  long  introduction,  let  me  trace 
some  of  Hegel's  ways  of  applying  his  discovery.  His 
system  resembles  a  mouse-trap,  in  which  if  you  once 
pass  the  door  you  may  be  lost  forever.  Safety  lies  in 
not  entering.  Hegelians  have  anointed,  so  to  speak, 
the  entrance  with  various  considerations  which,  stated 
in  an  abstract  form,  are  so  plausible  as  to  slide  us 
unresistingly  and  almost  unwittingly  through  the 
fatal  arch.  It  is  not  necessary  to  drink  the  ocean  to 
know  that  it  is  salt ;  nor  need  a  critic  dissect  a  whole 
system  after  proving  that  its  premises  are  rotten.  I 
shall  accordingly  confine  myself  to  a  few  of  the  points 
that  captivate  beginners  most;  and  assume  that  if 
they  break  down,  so  must  the  system  which  they 
prop. 

First  of  all,  Hegel  has  to  do  utterly  away  with  the 
sharing  and  partaking  business  he  so  much  loathes. 
He  will  not  call  contradiction  the  glue  in  one  place 
and  identity  in  another;  that  is  too  half-hearted. 
Contradiction  must  be  a  glue  universal,  and  must 
derive  its  credit  from  being  shown  to  be  latently  in- 
volved in  cases  that  we  hitherto  supposed  to  embody 
pure  continuity.  Thus,  the  relations  of  an  ego  with  its 
objects,  of  one  time  with  another  time,  of  one  place 
with  another  place,  of  a  cause  with  its  effect,  of  a 
thing  with  its  properties,  and  especially  of  parts  with 
wholes,  must  be  shown  to  involve  contradiction. 
Contradiction,  shown  to  lurk  in  the  very  heart  of 
coherence  and  continuity,  cannot  after  that  be  held 
to  defeat  them,  and  must  be  taken  as  the  universal 
solvent,  —  or,  rather,  there  is  no  longer  any  need  of 
a  solvent.  To  '  dissolve '  things  in  identity  was  the 
dream  of  earlier  cruder  schools.  Hegel  will  show 
that  their  very  difference  is  their  identity,  and  that 


2y 6         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

in  the  act  of  detachment  the  detachment  is  undone, 
and  they  fall  into  each  other's  arms. 

Now,  at  the  very  outset  it  seems  rather  odd  that  a 
philosopher  who  pretends  that  the  world  is  absolutely 
rational,  or  in  other  words  that  it  can  be  completely 
understood,  should  fall  back  on  a  principle  (the  iden- 
tity of  contradictories)  which  utterly  defies  under- 
standing, and  obliges  him  in  fact  to  use  the  word 
'understanding,'  whenever  it  occurs  in  his  pages,  as  a 
term  of  contempt.  Take  the  case  of  space  we  used 
above.  The  common  man  who  looks  at  space  be- 
lieves there  is  nothing  in  it  to  be  acquainted  with 
beyond  what  he  sees;  no  hidden  machinery,  no 
secrets,  nothing  but  the  parts  as  they  lie  side  by  side 
and  make  the  static  whole.  His  intellect  is  satisfied 
with  accepting  space  as  an  ultimate  genus  of  the 
given.  But  Hegel  cries  to  him :  "  Dupe  !  dost  thou 
not  see  it  to  be  one  nest  of  incompatibilities?  Do 
not  the  unity  of  its  wholeness  and  the  diversity  of  its 
parts  stand  in  patent  contradiction?  Does  it  not  both 
unite  and  divide  things ;  and  but  for  this  strange  and 
irreconcilable  activity,  would  it  be  at  all?  The  hidden 
dynamism  of  self-contradiction  is  what  incessantly 
produces  the  static  appearance  by  which  your  sense 
is  fooled." 

But  if  the  man  ask  how  self-contradiction  can  do 
all  this,  and  how  its  dynamism  may  be  seen  to  work, 
Hegel  can  only  reply  by  showing  him  the  space  itself 
and  saying:  (flLo,thus"  In  other  words,  instead  of 
the  principle  of  explanation  being  more  intelligible 
than  the  thing  to  be  explained,  it  is  absolutely  unin- 
telligible if  taken  by  itself,  and  must  appeal  to  its 
pretended  product  to  prove  its  existence.  Surely, 
such  a  system  of  explaining  notunt  per  ignotum,  of 


On  some  Hegelisms.  277 

making  the  explicans  borrow  credentials  from  the 
explicand,  and  of  creating  paradoxes  and  impossibili- 
ties where  none  were  suspected,  is  a  strange  candidate 
for  the  honor  of  being  a  complete  rationalizer  of  the 
world. 

The  principle  of  the  contradictoriness  of  identity 
and  the  identity  of  contradictories  is  the  essence  of 
the  hegelian  system.  But  what  probably  washes  this 
principle  down  most  with  beginners  is  the  combina- 
tion in  which  its  author  works  it  with  another  princi- 
ple which  is  by  no  means  characteristic  of  his  system, 
and  which,  for  want  of  a  better  name,  might  be  called 
the  '  principle  of  totality.'  This  principle  says  that 
you  cannot  adequately  know  even  a  part  until  you 
know  of  what  whole  it  forms  a  part.  As  Aristotle 
writes  and  Hegel  loves  to  quote,  an  amputated  hand 
is  not  even  a  hand.  And  as  Tennyson  says,  — 

"Little  flower  —  but  if  I  could  understand 
What  you  are,  root  and  all,  and  all  in  all, 
I  should  know  what  God  and  man  is." 

Obviously,  until  we  have  taken  in  all  the  relations, 
immediate  or  remote,  into  which  the  thing  actually 
enters  or  potentially  may  enter,  we  do  not  know  all 
about  the  thing. 

And  obviously  for  such  an  exhaustive  acquaintance 
with  the  thing,  an  acquaintance  with  every  other 
thing,  actual  and  potential,  near  and  remote,  is 
needed;  so  that  it  is  quite  fair  to  say  that  omni- 
science alone  can  completely  know  any  one  thing 
as  it  stands.  Standing  in  a  world  of  relations,  that 
world  must  be  known  before  the  thing  is  fully  known. 
This  doctrine  is  of  course  an  integral  part  of  empiri- 
cism, an  integral  part  of  common-sense.  Since  when 
could  good  men  not  apprehend  the  passing  hour 


278          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

in  the  light  of  life's  larger  sweep,  —  not  grow  dispas- 
sionate the  more  they  stretched  their  view?  Did 
the  '  law  of  sharing '  so  little  legitimate  their  proce- 
dure that  a  law  of  identity  of  contradictories,  forsooth, 
must  be  trumped  up  to  give  it  scope?  Out  upon 
the  idea ! 

Hume's  account  of  causation  is  a  good  illustration 
of  the  way  in  which  empiricism  may  use  the  principle 
of  totality.  We  call  something  a  cause  ;  but  we  at  the 
same  time  deny  its  effect  to  be  in  any  latent  way  con- 
tained in  or  substantially  identical  with  it.  We  thus 
cannot  tell  what  its  causality  amounts  to  until  its 
effect  has  actually  supervened.  The  effect,  then,  or 
something  beyond  the  thing  is  what  makes  the  thing 
to  be  so  far  as  it  is  a  cause.  Humism  thus  says 
that  its  causality  is  something  adventitious  and  not 
necessarily  given  when  its  other  attributes  are  there. 
Generalizing  this,  empiricism  contends  that  we  must 
everywhere  distinguish  between  the  intrinsic  being  of 
a  thing  ind  its  relations,  and,  among  these,  between 
those  that  are  essential  to  our  knowing  it  at  all  and 
those  that  may  be  called  adventitious.  The  thing  as 
actually  present  in  a  given  world  is  there  with  all  its 
relations;  for  it  to  be  known  as  it  there  exists,  they 
must  be  known  too,  and  it  and  they  form  a  single  fact 
for  any  consciousness  large  enough  to  embrace  that 
world  as  a  unity.  But  what  constitutes  this  singleness 
of  fact,  this  unity?  Empiricism  says,  Nothing  but  the 
relation-yielding  matrix  in  which  the  several  items  of 
the  world  find  themselves  embedded,  —  time,  namely, 
and  space,  and  the  mind  of  the  knower.  And  it  says 
that  were  some  of  the  ifems  quite  different  from  what 
they  are  and  others  the  same,  still,  for  aught  we  can 
see,  an  equally  unitary  world  might  be,  provided  each 


On  some  Hegelisms.  279 

item  were  an  object  for  consciousness  and  occupied  a 
determinate  point  in  space  and  time.  All  the  adven- 
titious relations  would  in  such  a  world  be  changed, 
along  with  the  intrinsic  natures  and  places  of  the 
beings  between  which  they  obtained ;  but  the  '  prin- 
ciple of  totality  '  in  knowledge  would  in  no  wise  be 
affected. 

But  Hegelism  dogmatically  denies  all  this  to  be 
possible.  In  the  first  place  it  says  there  are  no  in- 
trinsic natures  that  may  change ;  in  the  second  it 
says  there  are  no  adventitious  relations.  When  the 
relations  of  what  we  call  a  thing  are  told,  no  caput 
mortuum  of  intrinsicality,  no  '  nature,'  is  left  The 
relations  soak  up  all  there  is  of  the  thing ;  the  '  items ' 
of  the  world  are  but  foci  of  relation  with  other  foci  of 
relation ;  and  all  the  relations  are  necessary.  The 
unity  of  the  world  has  nothing  to  do  with  any 
'  matrix.'  The  matrix  and  the  items,  each  with  all, 
make  a  unity,  simply  because  each  in  truth  is  all  the 
rest.  The  proof  lies  in  the  hegelian  principle  of  to- 
tality, which  demands  that  if  any  one  part  be  posited 
alone  all  the  others  shall  forthwith  emanate  from  it  and 
infallibly  reproduce  the  whole.  In  the  modus  operandi 
of  the  emanation  comes  in,  as  I  said,  that  partnership 
of  the  principle  of  totality  with  that  of  the  identity  of 
contradictories  which  so  recommends  the  latter  to 
beginners  in  Hegel's  philosophy.  To  posit  one  item 
alone  is  to  deny  the  rest ;  to  deny  them  is  to  refer  to 
them ;  to  refer  to  them  is  to  begin,  at  least,  to  bring 
them  on  the  scene ;  and  to  begin  is  in  the  fulness  of 
time  to  end. 

If  we  call  this  a  monism,  Hegel  is  quick  to  cry, 
Not  so !  To  say  simply  that  the  one  item  is  the  rest 


28o         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

of  the  universe  is  as  false  and  one-sided  as  to  say  that 
it  is  simply  itself.  It  is  both  and  neither;  and  the 
only  condition  on  which  we  gain  the  right  to  affirm 
that  it  is,  is  that  we  fail  not  to  keep  affirming  all  the 
while  that  it  is  not,  as  well.  Thus  the  truth  refuses 
to  be  expressed  in  any  single  act  of  judgment  or 
sentence.  The  world  appears  as  a  monism  and  a 
pluralism,  just  as  it  appeared  in  our  own  introductory 
exposition. 

But  the  trouble  that  keeps  us  and  Hegel  from  ever 
joining  hands  over  this  apparent  formula  of  brother- 
hood is  that  we  distinguish,  or  try  to  distinguish,  the 
respects  in  which  the  world  is  one  from  those  in  which 
it  is  many,  while  all  such  stable  distinctions  are  what 
he  most  abominates.  The  reader  may  decide  which 
procedure  helps  his  reason  most.  For  my  own  part, 
the  time-honored  formula  of  empiricist  pluralism,  that 
the  world  cannot  be  set  down  in  any  single  proposi- 
tion, grows  less  instead  of  more  intelligible  when  I 
add,  "  And  yet  the  different  propositions  that  express 
it  are  one  !  "  The  unity  of  the  propositions  is  that  of 
the  mind  that  harbors  them.  Any  one  who  insists 
that  their  diversity  is  in  any  way  itself  their  unity,  can 
only  do  so  because  he  loves  obscurity  and  mystifica- 
tion for  their  own  pure  sakes. 

Where  you  meet  with  a  contradiction  among  real- 
ities, Herbart  used  to  say,  it  shows  you  have  failed  to 
make  a  real  distinction.  Hegel's  sovereign  method 
of  going  to  work  and  saving  all  possible  contradic- 
tions, lies  in  pertinaciously  refusing  to  distinguish. 
He  takes  what  is  true  of  a  term  secundum  qttid,  treats 
it  as  true  of  the  same  term  simpliciter,  and  then,  of 
course,  applies  it  to  the  term  secundum  aliud.  A 


On  some  Hegelisms.  281 

good  example  of  this  is  found  in  the  first  triad.  This 
triad  shows  that  the  mutability  of  the  real  world  is 
due  to  the  fact  that  being  constantly  negates  itself; 
that  whatever  is  by  the  same  act  is  not,  and  gets  un- 
done and  swept  away ;  and  that  thus  the  irremediable 
torrent  of  life  about  which  so  much  rhetoric  has  been 
written  has  its  roots  in  an  ineluctable  necessity  which 
lies  revealed  to  our  logical  reason.  This  notion  of  a 
being  which  forever  stumbles  over  its  own  feet,  and 
has  to  change  in  order  to  exist  at  all,  is  a  very  pictur- 
esque symbol  of  the  reality,  and  is  probably  one  of 
the  points  that  make  young  readers  feel  as  if  a  deep 
core  of  truth  lay  in  the  system. 

But  how  is  the  reasoning  done?  Pure  being  is  as- 
sumed, without  determinations,  being  secundum  quid. 
In  this  respect  it  agrees  with  nothing.  Therefore 
simpliciter  it  is  nothing;  wherever  we  find  it,  it  is  no- 
thing; crowned  with  complete  determinations  then, 
or  secundum  aliud,  it  is  nothing  still,  and  hebt  sick 
auf. 

It  is  as  if  we  said,  Man  without  his  clothes  may  be 
named  '  the  naked.'  Therefore  man  simpliciter  is 
the  naked ;  and  finally  man  with  his  hat,  shoes,  and 
overcoat  on  is  the  naked  still. 

Of  course  we  may  in  this  instance  or  any  other 
repeat  that  the  conclusion  is  strictly  true,  however 
comical  it  seems.  Man  within  the  clothes  is  naked, 
just  as  he  is  without  them.  Man  would  never  have 
invented  the  clothes  had  he  not  been  naked.  The 
fact  of  his  being  clad  at  all  does  prove  his  essential 
nudity.  And  so  in  general,  —  the  form  of  any  judg- 
ment, being  the  addition  of  a  predicate  to  a  subject, 
shows  that  the  subject  has  been  conceived  without 
the  predicate,  and  thus  by  a  strained  metaphor  may 


282         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

be  called  the  predicate's  negation.  Well  and  good ! 
let  the  expression  pass.  But  we  must  notice  this. 
The  judgment  has  now  created  a  new  subject,  the 
naked-clad,  and  all  propositions  regarding  this  must 
be  judged  on  their  own  merits ;  for  those  true  of  the 
old  subject,  '  the  naked,'  are  no  longer  true  of  this 
one.  For  instance,  we  cannot  say  because  the  naked 
pure  and  simple  must  not  enter  the  drawing-room 
or  is  in  danger  of  taking  cold,  that  the  naked  with 
his  clothes  on  will  also  take  cold  or  must  stay  in  his 
bedroom.  Hold  to  it  eternally  that  the  clad  man  is 
still  naked  if  it  amuse  you,  —  't  is  designated  in  the 
bond ;  but  the  so-called  contradiction  is  a  sterile 
boon.  Like  Shylock's  pound  of  flesh,  it  leads  to  no 
consequences.  It  does  not  entitle  you  to  one  drop  of 
his  Christian  blood  either  in  the  way  of  catarrh,  so- 
cial exclusion,  or  what  further  results  pure  nakedness 
may  involve. 

In  a  version  of  the  first  step  given  by  our  foremost 
American  Hegelian,1  we  find  this  playing  with  the 
necessary  form  of  judgment.  Pure  being,  he  says, 
has  no  determinations.  But  the  having  none  is  itself 
a  determination.  Wherefore  pure  being  contradicts 
its  own  self,  and  so  on.  Why  not  take  heed  to  the 
•meaning  of  what  is  said  ?  When  we  make  the  predi- 
cation concerning  pure  being,  our  meaning  is  merely 
the  denial  of  all  other  determinations  than  the  particu- 
lar one  we  make.  The  showman  who  advertised  his 
elephant  as  '  larger  than  any  elephant  in  the  world 
except  himself  must  have  been  in  an  hegelian  coun- 
try where  he  was  afraid  that  if  he  were  less  explicit 
the  audience  would  dialectically  proceed  to  say: 

1  Journal  of  Speculative  Philosophy,  viii.  37. 


On  some  Hegelisms.  283 

"  This  elephant,  larger  than  any  in  the  world,  involves 
a  contradiction ;  for  he  himself  is  in  the  world,  and 
so  stands  endowed  with  the  virtue  of  being  both 
larger  and  smaller  than  himself, — a  perfect  hegelian 
elephant,  whose  immanent  self-contradictoriness  can 
only  be  removed  in  a  higher  synthesis.  Show  us  the 
higher  synthesis !  We  don't  care  to  see  such  a  mere 
abstract  creature  as  your  elephant."  It  may  be  (and 
it  was  indeed  suggested  in  antiquity)  that  all  things 
are  of  their  own  size  by  being  both  larger  and  smaller 
than  themselves.  But  in  the  case  of  this  elephant  the 
scrupulous  showman  nipped  such  philosophizing  and 
all  its  inconvenient  consequences  in  the  bud,  by  ex- 
plicitly intimating  that  larger  than  any  other  elephant 
was  all  he  meant. 

Hegel's  quibble  with  this  word  other  exemplifies 
the  same  fallacy.  All  '  others,'  as  such,  are  accord- 
ing to  him  identical.  That  is,  '  otherness,'  which  can 
only  be  predicated  of  a  given  thing  A,  secundum  quid 
(as  other  than  B,  etc.),  is  predicated  simpliciter,  and 
made  to  identify  the  A  in  question  with  B,  which  is 
other  only  secundum  aliud, —  namely  other  than  A. 

Another  maxim  that  Hegelism  is  never  tired  of 
repeating  is  that  "  to  know  a  limit  is  already  to  be 
beyond  it."  "  Stone  walls  do  not  a  prison  make, 
nor  iron  bars  a  cage."  The  inmate  of  the  peniten- 
tiary shows  by  his  grumbling  that  he  is  still  in  the 
stage  of  abstraction  and  of  separative  thought.  The 
more  keenly  he  thinks  of  the  fun  he  might  be  having 
outside,  the  more  deeply  he  ought  to  feel  that  the 
walls  identify  him  with  it.  They  set  him  beyond 
them  secundum  quid,  in  imagination,  in  longing,  in 
despair;  argal  they  take  him  there  simpliciter  and 


284         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

in  every  way,  —  in  flesh,  in  power,  in  deed.     Foolish 
convict,  to  ignore  his  blessings ! 

Another  mode  of  stating  his  principle  is  this :  "  To 
know  the  finite  as  such,  is  also  to  know  the  infinite." 
Expressed  in  this  abstract  shape,  the  formula  is  as 
insignificant  as  it  is  unobjectionable.  We  can  cap 
every  word  with  a  negative  particle,  and  the  word 
finished  immediately  suggests  the  word  unfinished, 
and  we  know  the  two  words  together. 

But  it  is  an  entirely  different  thing  to  take  the 
knowledge  of  a  concrete  case  of  ending,  and  to  say 
that  it  virtually  makes  us  acquainted  with  other  con- 
crete facts  in  infinitum.  For,  in  the  first  place,  the 
end  may  be  an  absolute  one.  The  matter  of  the 
universe,  for  instance,  is  according  to  all  appearances 
in  finite  amount ;  and  if  we  knew  that  we  had  counted 
the  last  bit  of  it,  infinite  knowledge  in  that  respect,  so 
far  from  being  given,  would  be  impossible.  With  re- 
gard to  space,  it  is  true  that  in  drawing  a  bound  we 
are  aware  of  more.  But  to  treat  this  little  fringe  as 
the  equal  of  infinite  space  is  ridiculous.  It  resembles 
infinite  space  secundum  quid,  or  in  but  one  respect, 
—  its  spatial  quality.  We  believe  it  homogeneous 
with  whatever  spaces  may  remain ;  but  it  would  be 
fatuous  to  say,  because  one  dollar  in  my  pocket  is 
homogeneous  with  all  the  dollars  in  the  country,  that 
to  have  it  is  to  have  them.  The  further  points  of 
space  are  as  numerically  distinct  from  the  fringe  as 
the  dollars  from  the  dollar,  and  not  until  we  have 
actually  intuited  them  can  we  be  said  to  '  know ' 
them  simpliciter.  The  hegelian  reply  is  that  the 
quality  of  space  constitutes  its  only  worth  ;  and  that 
there  is  nothing  true,  good,  or  beautiful  to  be  known 


On  some  Hegelisms.  285 

in  the  spaces  beyond  which  is  not  already  known  in 
the  fringe.  This  introduction  of  a  eulogistic  term 
into  a  mathematical  question  is  original.  The  '  true ' 
and  the  '  false '  infinite  are  about  as  appropriate  dis- 
tinctions in  a  discussion  of  cognition  as  the  good  and 
the  naughty  rain  would  be  in  a  treatise  on  meteor- 
ology. But  when  we  grant  that  all  the  worth  of  the 
knowledge  of  distant  spaces  is  due  to  the  knowledge 
of  what  they  may  carry  in  them,  it  then  appears  more 
than  ever  absurd  to  say  that  the  knowledge  of  the 
fringe  is  an  equivalent  for  the  infinitude  of  the  distant 
knowledge.  The  distant  spaces  even  simpliciter  are 
not  yet  yielded  to  our  thinking;  and  if  they  were 
yielded  simpliciter,  would  not  be  yielded  secundum 
aliud,  or  in  respect  to  their  material  filling  out. 

Shylock's  bond  was  an  omnipotent  instrument  com- 
pared with  this  knowledge  of  the  finite,  which  remains 
the  ignorance  it  always  was,  till  the  infinite  by  its  own 
act  has  piece  by  piece  placed  itself  in  our  hands. 

Here  Hegelism  cries  out :  "  By  the  identity  of  the 
knowledges  of  infinite  and  finite  I  never  meant  that 
one  could  be  a  substitute  for  the  other;  nor  does  true 
philosophy  ever  mean  by  identity  capacity  for  substi- 
tution." This  sounds  suspiciously  like  the  good  and 
the  naughty  infinite,  or  rather  like  the  mysteries  of 
the  Trinity  and  the  Eucharist.  To  the  unsentimental 
mind  there  are  but  two  sorts  of  identity,  —  total  iden- 
tity and  partial  identity.  Where  the  identity  is  total, 
the  things  can  be  substituted  wholly  for  one  another. 
Where  substitution  is  impossible,  it  must  be  that  the 
identity  is  incomplete.  It  is  the  duty  of  the  student 
then  to  ascertain  the  exact  quid,  secundum  which  it 
obtains,  as  we  have  tried  to  do  above.  Even  the 
Catholic  will  tell  you  that  when  he  believes  in  the 


286         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

identity  of  the  wafer  with  Christ's  body,  he  does  not 
mean  in  all  respects,  —  so  that  he  might  use  it  to  ex- 
hibit muscular  fibre,  or  a  cook  make  it  smell  like 
baked  meat  in  the  oven.  He  means  that  in  the  one 
sole  respect  of  nourishing  his  being  in  a  certain  way, 
it  is  identical  with  and  can  be  substituted  for  the  very 
body  of  his  Redeemer. 

'  The  knowledge  of  opposites  is  one,'  is  one  of  the 
hegelian  first  principles,  of  which  the  preceding  are 
perhaps  only  derivatives.  Here  again  Hegelism  takes 
'  knowledge  '  simpliciter,  and  substituting  it  for  know- 
ledge in  a  particular  respect,  avails  itself  of  the  con- 
fusion to  cover  other  respects  never  originally  implied. 
When  the  knowledge  of  a  thing  is  given  us,  we  no 
doubt  think  that  the  thing  may  or  must  have  an  oppo- 
site. This  postulate  of  something  opposite  we  may 
call  a  '  knowledge  of  the  opposite '  if  we  like ;  but  it 
is  a  knowledge  of  it  in  only  that  one  single  respect, 
that  it  is  something  opposite.  No  number  of  opposites 
to  a  quality  we  have  never  directly  experienced  could 
ever  lead  us  positively  to  infer  what  that  quality  is. 
There  is  a  jolt  between  the  negation  of  them  and  the 
actual  positing  of  it  in  its  proper  shape,  that  twenty 
logics  of  Hegel  harnessed  abreast  cannot  drive  us 
smoothly  over. 

The  use  of  the  maxim  '  All  determination  is  nega- 
tion' is  the  fattest  and  most  full-blown  application  of 
the  method  of  refusing  to  distinguish.  Taken  in  its 
vague  confusion,  it  probably  does  more  than  anything 
else  to  produce  the  sort  of  flicker  and  dazzle  which 
are  the  first  mental  conditions  for  the  reception  of 
Hegel's  system.  The  word  '  negation  '  taken  simpli- 
citer  is  treated  as  if  it  covered  an  indefinite  number  of 


On  some  Hegelisms.  287 

secundums,  culminating  in  the  very  peculiar  one  of  self- 
negation.  Whence  finally  the  conclusion  is  drawn 
that  assertions  are  universally  self-contradictory.  As 
this  is  an  important  matter,  it  seems  worth  while  to 
treat  it  a  little  minutely. 

When  I 'measure  out  a  pint,  say  of  milk,  and  so  de- 
termine it,  what  do  I  do?  I  virtually  make  two  asser- 
tions regarding  it,  —  it  is  this  pint;  it  is  not  those 
other  gallons.  One  of  these  is  an  affirmation,  the 
other  a  negation.  Both  have  a  common  subject ;  but 
the  predicates  being  mutually  exclusive,  the  two  as- 
sertions lie  beside  each  other  in  endless  peace. 

I  may  with  propriety  be  said  to  make  assertions 
more  remote  still,  —  assertions  of  which  those  other 
gallons  are  the  subject.  As  it  is  not  they,  so  are  they 
not  the  pint  which  it  is.  The  determination  "  this  is 
the  pint"  carries  with  it  the  negation,  —  "those  are 
not  the  pints."  Here  we  have  the  same  predicate ; 
but  the  subjects  are  exclusive  of  each  other,  so  there 
is  again  endless  peace.  In  both  couples  of  proposi- 
tions negation  and  affirmation  are  secundum  aliud:  this 
is  a;  this  is  n't  not-#.  This  kind  of  negation  involved 
in  determination  cannot  possibly  be  what  Hegel  wants 
for  his  purposes.  The  table  is  not  the  chair,  the  fire- 
place is  not  the  cupboard,  —  these  are  literal  expres- 
sions of  the  law  of  identity  and  contradiction,  those 
principles  of  the  abstracting  and  separating  under- 
standing for  which  Hegel  has  so  sovereign  a  contempt, 
and  which  his  logic  is  meant  to  supersede. 

And  accordingly  Hegelians  pursue  the  subject  fur- 
ther, saying  there  is  in  every  determination  an  ele- 
ment of  real  conflict.  Do  you  not  in  determining 
the  milk  to  be  this  pint  exclude  it  forever  from  the 
chance  of  being  those  gallons,  frustrate  it  from  expan- 


288          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

sion?  And  so  do  you  not  equally  exclude  them  from 
the  being  which  it  now  maintains  as  its  own? 

Assuredly  if  you  had  been  hearing  of  a  land  flow- 
ing with  milk  and  honey,  and  had  gone  there  with  un- 
limited expectations  of  the  rivers  the  milk  would  fill ; 
and  if  you  found  there  was  but  this  single  pint  in  the 
whole  country,  —  the  determination  of  the  pint  would 
exclude  another  determination  which  your  mind  had 
previously  made  of  the  milk.  There  would  be  a  real 
conflict  resulting  in  the  victory  of  one  side.  The 
rivers  would  be  negated  by  the  single  pint  being 
affirmed ;  and  as  rivers  and  pint  are  affirmed  of  the 
same  milk  (first  as  supposed  and  then  as  found),  the 
contradiction  would  be  complete. 

But  it  is  a  contradiction  that  can  never  by  any 
chance  occur  in  real  nature  or  being.  It  can  only 
occur  between  a  false  representation  of  a  being  and 
the  true  idea  of  the  being  when  actually  cognized. 
The  first  got  into  a  place  where  it  had  no  rights  and 
had  to  be  ousted.  But  in  rerum  naturd  things  do  not 
get  into  one  another's  logical  places.  The  gallons 
first  spoken  of  never  say,  "  We  are  the  pint;  "  the  pint 
never  says,  "  I  am  the  gallons."  It  never  tries  to 
expand ;  and  so  there  is  no  chance  for  anything  to 
exclude  or  negate  it.  It  thus  remains  affirmed 
absolutely, 

Can  it  be  believed  in  the  teeth  of  these  elementary 
truths  that  the  principle  determinatio  negatio  is  held 
throughout  Hegel  to  imply  an  active  contradiction, 
conflict,  and  exclusion?  Do  the  horse-cars  jingling 
outside  negate  me  writing  in  this  room?  Do  I,  reader, 
negate  you?  Of  course,  if  I  say,  "  Reader,  we  are 
two,  and  therefore  I  am  two,"  I  negate  you,  for  I  am 
actually  thrusting  a  part  into  the  seat  of  the  whole. 


On  some  Hegelisms.  289 

The  orthodox  logic  expresses  the  fallacy  by  saying 
the  we  is  taken  by  me  distributively  instead  of  collec- 
tively ;  but  as  long  as  I  do  not  make  this  blunder,  and 
am  content  with  my  part,  we  all  are  safe.  In  rerum 
naturd,  parts  remain  parts.  Can  you  imagine  one 
position  in  space  trying  to  get  into  the  place  of  an- 
other position  and  having  to  be  '  contradicted  '  by  that 
other?  Can  you  imagine  your  thought  of  an  object 
trying  to  dispossess  the  real  object  from  its  being,  and 
so  being  negated  by  it?  The  great,  the  sacred  law 
of  partaking,  the  noiseless  step  of  continuity,  seems 
something  that  Hegel  cannot  possibly  understand. 
All  or  nothing  is  his  one  idea.  For  him  each  point  of 
space,  of  time,  each  feeling  in  the  ego,  each  quality  of 
being,  is  clamoring,  "  I  am  the  all,  —  there  is  nought 
else  but  me."  This  clamor  is  its  essence,  which  has 
to  be  negated  in  another  act  which  gives  it  its  true 
determination.  What  there  is  of  affirmative  in  this 
determination  is  thus  the  mere  residuum  left  from 
the  negation  by  others  of  the  negation  it  originally 
applied  to  them. 

But  why  talk  of  residuum?  The  Kilkenny  cats  of 
fable  could  leave  a  residuum  in  the  shape  of  their 
undevoured  tails.  But  the  Kilkenny  cats  of  existence 
as  it  appears  in  the  pages  of  Hegel  are  all-devouring, 
and  leave  no  residuum.  Such  is  the  unexampled 
fury  of  their  onslaught  that  they  get  clean  out  of 
themselves  and  into  each  other,  nay  more,  pass 
right  through  each  other,  and  then  "  return  into 
themselves"  ready  for  another  round,  as  insatiate, 
but  as  inconclusive,  as  the  one  that  went  before. 

If  I  characterized  Hegel's  own  mood  as  u/fyw,  the 
insolence  of  excess,  what  shall  I  say  of  the  mood  he 
ascribes  to  being?  Man  makes  the  gods  in  his  im- 


290         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

age;  and  Hegel,  in  daring  to  insult  the  spotless 
croxfrpoavvr)  of  space  and  time,  the  bound-respecters, 
in  branding  as  strife  that  law  of  sharing  under  whose 
sacred  keeping,  like  a  strain  of  music,  like  an  odor  of 
incense  (as  Emerson  says),  the  dance  of  the  atoms 
goes  forward  still,  seems  to  me  but  to  manifest  his 
own  deformity. 

This  leads  me  to  animadvert  on  an  erroneous  In- 
ference which  hegelian  idealism  makes  from  the  form 
of  the  negative  judgment.  Every  negation,  it  says, 
must  be  an  intellectual  act.  Even  the  most  naif  real- 
ism will  hardly  pretend  that  the  non-table  as  such  ex- 
sists  in  se  after  the  same  fashion  as  the  table  does.  But 
table  and  non-table,  since  they  are  given  to  our  thought 
together,  must  be  consubstantial.  Try  to  make  the 
position  or  affirmation  of  the  table  as  simple  as  you 
can,  it  is  also  the  negation  of  the  non-table ;  and  thus 
positive  being  itself  seems  after  all  but  a  function  of 
intelligence,  like  negation.  Idealism  is  proved,  real- 
ism is  unthinkable.  Now  I  have  not  myself  the  least 
objection  to  idealism,  —  an  hypothesis  which  volu- 
minous considerations  make  plausible,  and  whose  diffi- 
culties may  be  cleared  away  any  day  by  new  discrim- 
inations or  discoveries.  But  I  object  to  proving  by 
these  patent  ready-made  a  priori  methods  that  which 
can  only  be  the  fruit  of  a  wide  and  patient  induction. 
For  the  truth  is  that  our  affirmations  and  negations 
do  not  stand  on  the  same  footing  at  all,  and  are  any- 
thing but  consubstantial.  An  affirmation  says  some- 
thing about  an  objective  existence.  A  negation  says 
something  about  an  affirmation,  —  namely,  that  it  is 
false.  There  are  no  negative  predicates  or  falsities  in 
nature.  Being  makes  no  false  hypotheses  that  have 


On  Some  Hegelisms.  291 

to  be  contradicted.  The  only  denials  she  can  be  in 
any  way  construed  to  perform  are  denials  of  our 
errors.  This  shows  plainly  enough  that  denial  must 
be  of  something  mental,  since  the  thing  denied  is 
always  a  fiction.  "  The  table  is  not  the  chair  "  sup- 
poses the  speaker  to  have  been  playing  with  the  false 
notion  that  it  may  have  been  the  chair.  But  affirma- 
tion may  perfectly  well  be  of  something  having  no 
such  necessary  and  constitutive  relation  to  thought. 
Whether  it  really  is  of  such  a  thing  is  for  harder  con- 
siderations to  decide. 

If  idealism  be  true,  the  great  question  that  presents 
itself  is  whether  its  truth  involve  the  necessity  of  an 
infinite,  unitary,  and  omniscient  consciousness,  or 
whether  a  republic  of  semi-detached  consciousnesses 
will  do,  —  consciousnesses  united  by  a  certain  com- 
mon fund  of  representations,  but  each  possessing  a 
private  store  which  the  others  do  not  share.  Either 
hypothesis  is  to  me  conceivable.  But  whether  the 
egos  be  one  or  many,  the  nextness  of  representations 
to  one  another  within  them  is  the  principle  of  unifica- 
tion of  the  universe.  To  be  thus  consciously  next 
to  some  other  representation  is  the  condition  to  which 
each  representation  must  submit,  under  penalty  of 
being  excluded  from  this  universe,  and  like  Lord 
Dundreary's  bird  '  flocking  all  alone,'  and  forming  a 
separate  universe  by  itself.  But  this  is  only  a  condi- 
tion of  which  the  representations  partake;  it  leaves 
all  their  other  determinations  undecided.  To  say, 
because  representation  b  cannot  be  in  the  same  uni- 
verse with  a  without  being  a's  neighbor ;  that  therefore 
a  possesses,  involves,  or  necessitates  b,  hide  and  hair, 
flesh  and  fell,  all  appurtenances  and  belongings,  —  is 


292         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

only  the  silly  hegelian  all-or-nothing  insatiateness 
once  more. 

Hegel's  own  logic,  with  all  the  senseless  hocus- 
pocus  of  its  triads,  utterly  fails  to  prove  his  position. 
The  only  evident  compulsion  which  representations 
exert  upon  one  another  is  compulsion  to  submit  to 
the  conditions  of  entrance  into  the  same  universe  with 
them  —  the  conditions  of  continuity,  of  selfhood, 
space,  and  time  —  under  penalty  of  being  excluded. 
But  what  this  universe  shall  be  is  a  matter  of  fact 
which  we  cannot  decide  till  we  know  what  represen- 
tations have  submitted  to  these  its  sole  conditions. 
The  conditions  themselves  impose  no  further  require- 
ments. In  short,  the  notion  that  real  contingency  and 
ambiguity  may  be  features  of  the  real  world  is  a  per- 
fectly unimpeachable  hypothesis.  Only  in  such  a 
world  can  moral  judgments  have  a  claim  to  be.  For 
the  bad  is  that  which  takes  the  place  of  something 
else  which  possibly  might  have  been  where  it  now  is, 
and  the  better  is  that  which  absolutely  might  be  where 
it  absolutely  is  not.  In  the  universe  of  Hegel  —  the 
absolute  block  whose  parts  have  no  loose  play,  the 
pure  plethora  of  necessary  being  with  the  oxygen  of 
possibility  all  suffocated  out  of  its  lungs  —  there  can 
be  neither  good  nor  bad,  but  one  dead  level  of  mere 
fate. 

But  I  have  tired  the  reader  out.  The  worst  of 
criticising  Hegel  is  that  the  very  arguments  we  use 
against  him  give  forth  strange  and  hollow  sounds 
that  make  them  seem  almost  as  fantastic  as  the  errors 
to  which  they  are  addressed.  The  sense  of  a  uni- 
versal mirage,  of  a  ghostly  unreality,  steals  over  us, 
which  is  the  very  moonlit  atmosphere  of  Hegelism 
itself.  What  wonder  then  if,  instead  of  co  rert- 


On  some  Hegelisms.  293 

fng,  our  words  do  but  rejoice  and  delight,  those 
already  baptized  in  the  faith  of  confusion?  To  their 
charmed  senses  we  all  seem  children  of  Hegel  to- 
gether, only  some  of  us  have  not  the  wit  to  know  our 
own  father.  Just  as  Romanists  are  sure  to  inform  us 
that  our  reasons  against  Papal  Christianity  uncon- 
sciously breathe  the  purest  spirit  of  Catholicism,  so 
Hegelism  benignantly  smiles  at  our  exertions,  and 
murmurs,  "  If  the  red  slayer  think  he  slays ;  " 
"  When  me  they  fly,  I  am  the  wings,"  etc. 

To  forefend  this  unwelcome  adoption,  let  me  reca- 
pitulate in  a  few  propositions  the  reasons  why  I  am 
not  an  hegelian. 

1.  We  cannot  eat  our  cake  and  have  it;   that  is, 
the  only  real   contradiction   there    can   be   between 
thoughts  is  where  one  is  true,  the  other  false.     When 
this  happens,  one  must  go  forever ;   nor  is  there  any 
'  higher  synthesis '  in  which  both  can  wholly  revive. 

2.  A  chasm  is  not  a  bridge  in  any  utilizable  sense; 
that  is,  no  mere  negation  can  be  the  instrument  of  a 
positive  advance  in  thought. 

3.  The   continua,  time,    space,    and  the   ego,  are 
bridges,  because  they  are  without  chasm. 

4.  But  they  bridge  over  the  chasms  between  repre- 
sented qualities  only  partially. 

5.  This  partial  bridging,  however,  makes  the  qual- 
ities share  in  a  common  world. 

6.  The   other  characteristics  of  the   qualities  are 
separate  facts. 

7.  But  the  same  quality  appears  in  many  times  and 
spaces.     Generic   sameness  of  the   quality  wherever 
found   becomes  thus  a  further  means  by  which  the 
jolts  are  reduced. 

8.  '-^at   between   different   qualities    jolts    remain 


294         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

Each,  as  far  as  the  other  is  concerned,  is  an  abso- 
lutely separate  and  contingent  being. 

9.  The  moral  judgment  may  lead  us  to  postulate 
as  irreducible  the  contingencies  of  the  world. 

10.  Elements  mutually  contingent  are  not  in  con- 
flict so  long  as  they  partake  of  the  continua  of  time, 
space,  etc.,  —  partaking  being  the  exact  opposite  of 
strife.     They  conflict  only  when,  as  mutually  exclu- 
sive possibilities,  they  strive  to  possess  themselves  of 
the  same  parts  of  time,  space,  and  ego. 

11.  That  there  are  such  real  conflicts,  irreducible 
to  any  intelligence,  and  giving  rise  to  an  excess  of 
possibility   over   actuality,  is  an   hypothesis,   but   a 
credible  one.     No  philosophy  should  pretend  to  be 
anything  more. 

NOTE.  —  Since  the  preceding  article  was  written,  some  obser- 
vations on  the  effects  of  nitrous-oxide-gas-intoxication  which  I 
was  prompted  to  make  by  reading  the  pamphlet  called  The 
Anaesthetic  Revelation  and  the  Gist  of  Philosophy,  by  Benjamin 
Paul  Blood,  Amsterdam,  N.  Y.,  1874,  have  made  me  understand 
better  than  ever  before  both  the  strength  and  the  weakness  of 
Hegel's  philosophy.  I  strongly  urge  others  to  repeat  the  experi- 
ment, which  with  pure  gas  is  short  and  harmless  enough.  The 
effects  will  of  course  vary  with  the  individual,  just  as  they  vary 
in  the  same  individual  from  time  to  time;  but  it  is  probable 
that  in  the  former  case,  as  in  the  latter,  a  generic  resemblance 
will  obtain.  With  me,  as  with  every  other  person  of  whom  I 
have  heard,  the  keynote  of  the  experience  is  the  tremendously 
exciting  sense  of  an  intense  metaphysical  illumination.  Truth 
lies  open  to  the  view  in  depth  beneath  depth  of  almost  blinding 
evidence.  The  mind  sees  all  the  logical  relations  of  being  with 
an  apparent  subtlety  and  instantaneity  to  which  its  normal  con- 
sciousness offers  no  parallel ;  only  as  sobriety  returns,  the  feel- 
ing of  insight  fades,  and  one  is  left  staring  vacantly  at  a  few 
disjointed  words  and  phrases,  as  one  stares  at  a  cadaverous- 
looking  snow-peak  from  which  the  sunset  glow  has  just  fled,  or 
at  the  black  cinder  left  by  an  extinguished  brand. 


On  some  Hegelisms.  295 

The  immense  emotional  sense  of  reconciliation  which  char- 
acterizes the  'maudlin'  stage  of  alcoholic  drunkenness,  —  a 
stage  which  seems  silly  to  lookers-on,  but  the  subjective  rapture 
of1  which  probably  constitutes  a  chief  part  of  the  temptation  to 
the  vice,  —  is  well  known.  The  centre  and  periphery  of  things 
seem  to  come  together.  The  ego  and  its  objects,  the  meum 
and  the  tuum,  are  one.  Now  this,  only  a  thousandfold  en- 
hanced, was  the  effect  upon  me  of  the  gas :  and  its  first  result 
was  to  make  peal  through  me  with  unutterable  power  the  con- 
viction that  Hegelism  was  true  after  all,  and  that  the  deepest 
convictions  of  my  intellect  hitherto  were  wrong.  Whatever 
idea  or  representation  occurred  to  the  mind  was  seized  by  the 
same  logical  forceps,  and  served  to  illustrate  the  same  truth ; 
and  that  truth  was  that  every  opposition,  among  whatsoever 
things,  vanishes  in  a  higher  unity  in  which  it  is  based;  that  all 
contradictions,  so-called,  are  but  differences ;  that  all  differences 
are  of  degree ;  that  all  degrees  are  of  a  common  kind ;  that 
unbroken  continuity  is  of  the  essence  of  being;  and  that  we 
are  literally  in  the  midst  of  an  infinite,  to  perceive  the  existence 
of  which  is  the  utmost  we  can  attain.  Without  the  same  as 
a  basis,  how  could  strife  occur  ?  Strife  presupposes  something 
to  be  striven  about;  and  in  this  common  topic,  the  same  for 
both  parties,  the  differences  merge.  From  the  hardest  contra- 
diction to  the  tenderest  diversity  of  verbiage  differences  evapo- 
rate ;  yes  and  no  agree  at  least  in  being  assertions  ;  a  denial  of 
a  statement  is  but  another  mode  of  stating  the  same,  contra- 
diction can  only  occur  of  the  same  thing,  —  all  opinions  are 
thus  synonyms,  are  synonymous,  are  the  same.  But  the  same 
phrase  by  difference  of  emphasis  is  two ;  and  here  again  differ- 
ence and  no-difference  merge  in  one. 

It  is  impossible  to  convey  an  idea  of  the  torrential  character 
of  the  identification  of  opposites  as  it  streams  through  the  mind 
in  this  experience.  I  have  sheet  after  sheet  of  phrases  dictated 
or  written  during  the  intoxication,  which  to  the  sober  reader 
seem  meaningless  drivel,  but  which  at  the  moment  of  tran- 
scribing were  fused  in  the  fire  of  infinite  rationality.  God  and 
devil,  good  and  evil,  life  and  death,  I  and  thou,  sober  and  drunk, 
matter  and  form,  black  and  white,  quantity  and  quality,  shiver  of 
ecstasy  and  shudder  of  horror,  vomiting  and  swallowing,  inspira- 
tion and  expiration,  fate  and  reason,  great  and  small,  extent  and 
intent,  joke  and  earnest,  tragic  and  comic,  and  fifty  other  con- 


296          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

trasts  figure  in  these  pages  in  the  same  monotonous  way.  The 
mind  saw  how  each  term  belonged  to  its  contrast  through  a  knife- 
edge  moment  of  transition  which  it  effected,  and  which,  peren- 
nial and  eternal,  was  the  nunc  stans  of  life.  The  thought  of 
mutual  implication  of  the  parts  in  the  bare  form  of  a  judgment 
of  opposition,  as  '  nothing  —  but,'  '  no  more  —  than,'  '  only  —  if,' 
etc.,  produced  a  perfect  delirium  of  theoretic  rapture.  And  at 
last,  when  definite  ideas  to  work  on  came  slowly,  the  mind  went 
through  the  mere  form  of  recognizing  sameness  in  identity  by 
contrasting  the  same  word  with  itself,  differently  emphasized, 
or  shorn  of  its  initial  letter.  Let  me  transcribe  a  few  sentences : 

What 's  mistake  but  a  kind  of  take  ? 

What's  nausea  but  a  kind  of  -ausea? 

Sober,  drunk,  -unk,  astonishment. 

Everything  can  become  the  subject  of  criticism  —  how  criti- 
cise without  something  to  criticise  ? 

Agreement  —  disagreement ! ! 

Emotion  —  motion  ! ! ! 

Die  away  from,  front,  die  away  (without  the  from). 

Reconciliation  of  opposites ;  sober,  drunk,  all  the  same ! 

Good  and  evil  reconciled  in  a  laugh ! 

It  escapes,  it  escapes ! 

But 

What  escapes,  WHAT  escapes  ? 

Emphasis,  EMphasis;  there  must  be  some  emphasis  in  order 
for  there  to  be  a  phasis. 

No  verbiage  can  give  it,  because  the  verbiage  is  other. 

/wcoherent,  coherent  —  same. 

And  it  fades  !     And  it 's  infinite  !     AND  it 's  infinite  ! 

If  it  was  n't  going,  why  should  you  hold  on  to  it? 

Don't  you  see  the  difference,  don't  you  see  the  identity  ? 

Constantly  opposites  united ! 

The  same  me  telling  you  to  write  and  not  to  write  ! 

Extreme  —  extreme,  extreme  !  Within  the  «rtensity  that 
'extreme'  contains  is  contained  the  ' extreme*  of  intensity. 

Something,  and  other  than  that  thing ! 

Intoxication,  and  otherness  than  intoxication. 

Every  attempt  at  betterment,  —  every  attempt  at  otherment, 
—  is  a . 

It  fades  forever  and  forever  as  we  move. 


On  some  Hegelisms.  297 

There  is  a  reconciliation  ! 

Reconciliation  —  ^conciliation ! 

By  God,  how  that  hurts !  By  God,  how  it  does  n't  hurt ! 
Reconciliation  of  two  extremes. 

By  George,  nothing  but  0/A5ng  ! 

That  sounds  like  nonsense,  but  it  is  pure   0«sense ! 

Thought  deeper  than  speech ! 

Medical  school;  divinity  school,  school  I  SCHOOL!  Oh  my 
God,  oh  God,  oh  God ! 

The  most  coherent  and  articulate  sentence  which  came  was 
this :  — 

There  are  no  differences  but  differences  of  degree  between 
different  degrees  of  difference  and  no  difference. 

This  phrase  has  the  true  Hegelian  ring,  being  in  fact  a  regu- 
lar sich  als  sich  auf  sich  selbst  beziehende  Negathntdt.  And 
true  Hegelians  will  uberhaupt  be  able  to  read  between  the 
lines  and  feel,  at  any  rate,  what  possible  ecstasies  of  cognitive 
emotion  might  have  bathed  these  tattered  fragments  of  thought 
when  they  were  alive.  But  for  the  assurance  of  a  certain 
amount  of  respect  from  them,  I  should  hardly  have  ventured  to 
print  what  must  be  such  caviare  to  the  general. 

But  now  comes  the  reverse  of  the  medal.  What  is  the 
principle  of  unity  in  all  this  monotonous  rain  of  instances? 
Although  I  did  not  see  it  at  first,  I  soon  found  that  it  was  in 
each  case  nothing  but  the  abstract  genus  of  which  the  conflict- 
ing terms  were  opposite  species.  In  other  words,  although  the 
flood  of  ontologic  emotion  was  Hegelian  through  and  through, 
the  ground  for  it  was  nothing  but  the  world-old  principle  that 
things  are  the  same  only  so  far  and  no  farther  than  they  are 
the  same,  or  partake  of  a  common  nature,  —  the  principle  that 
Hegel  most  tramples  under  foot.  At  the  same  time  the  rapture 
of  beholding  a  process  that  was  infinite,  changed  (as  the  nature 
of  the  infinitude  was  realized  by  the  mind)  into  the  sense  of  a 
dreadful  and  ineluctable  fate,  with  whose  magnitude  every  finite 
effort  is  incommensurable  and  in  the  light  of  which  whatever 
happens  is  indifferent.  This  instantaneous  revulsion  of  mood 
from  rapture  to  horror  is,  perhaps,  the  strongest  emotion  I  have 
ever  experienced.  I  got  it  repeatedly  when  the  inhalation  was 
continued  long  enough  to  produce  incipient  nausea;  and  I  can- 
not but  regard  it  as  the  normal  and  inevitable  outcome  of  the 


298          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

intoxication,  if  sufficiently  prolonged.  A  pessimistic  fatalism, 
depth  within  depth  of  impotence  and  indifference,  reason  and 
silliness  united,  not  in  a  higher  synthesis,  but  in  the  fact  that 
whichever  you  choose  it  is  all  one,  —  this  is  the  upshot  of  a  reve- 
lation that  began  so  rosy  bright. 

Even  when  the  process  stops  short  of  this  ultimatum,  the 
reader  will  have  noticed  from  the  phrases  quoted  how  often  it 
ends  by  losing  the  clue.  Something  'fades,'  'escapes;'  and 
the  feeling  of  insight  is  changed  into  an  intense  one  of  be- 
wilderment, puzzle,  confusion,  astonishment.  I  know  no  more 
singular  sensation  than  this  intense  bewilderment,  with  nothing 
particular  left  to  be  bewildered  at  save  the  bewilderment  itself. 
It  seems,  indeed,  a  causa  sui,  or  'spirit  become  its  own  object.' 

My  conclusion  is  that  the  togetherness  of  things  in  a  com- 
mon world,  the  law  of  sharing,  of  which  I  have  said  so  much, 
may,  when  perceived,  engender  a  very  powerful  emotion ;  that 
Hegel  was  so  unusually  susceptible  to  this  emotion  throughout 
his  life  that  its  gratification  became  his  supreme  end,  and  made 
him  tolerably  unscrupulous  as  to  the  means  he  employed;  that 
indifferentism  is  the  true  outcome  of  every  view  of  the  world 
which  makes  infinity  and  continuity  to  be  its  essence,  and  that 
pessimistic  or  optimistic  attitudes  pertain  to  the  mere  accidental 
subjectivity  of  the  moment;  finally,  that  the  identification  of 
contradictories,  so  far  from  being  the  self-developing  process 
which  Hegel  supposes,  is  really  a  self-consuming  process,  pass- 
ing from  the  less  to  the  more  abstract,  and  terminating  either  in 
a  laugh  at  the  ultimate  nothingness,  or  in  a  mood  of  vertiginous 
amazement  at  a  meaningless  infinity. 


Psychical  Research.  299 


WHAT  PSYCHICAL  RESEARCH   HAS 
ACCOMPLISHED.1 

"  r  I  "'HE  great  field  for  new  discoveries,"  said  a 
-L  scientific  friend  to  me  the  other  day,  "  is 
always  the  unclassified  residuum."  Round  about  the 
accredited  and  orderly  facts  of  every  science  there 
ever  floats  a  sort  of  dust-cloud  of  exceptional  obser- 
vations, of  occurrences  minute  and  irregular  and  sel- 
dom met  with,  which  it  always  proves  more  easy  to 
ignore  than  to  attend  to.  The  ideal  of  every  science 
is  that  of  a  closed  and  completed  system  of  truth. 
The  charm  of  most  sciences  to  their  more  passive 
disciples  consists  in  their  appearing,  in  fact,  to  wear 
just  this  ideal  form.  Each  one  of  our  various  ologies 
seems  to  offer  a  definite  head  of  classification  for 
every  possible  phenomenon  of  the'  sort  which  it  pro- 
fesses to  cover;  and  so  far  from  free  is  most  men's 
fancy,  that,  when  a  consistent  and  organized  scheme 
of  this  sort  has  once  been  comprehended  and  assimi- 
lated, a  different  scheme  is  unimaginable.  No  alter- 
native, whether  to  whole  or  parts,  can  any  longer 
be  conceived  as  possible.  Phenomena  unclassifiable 
within  the  system  are  therefore  paradoxical  absurdi- 

1  This  Essay  is  formed  of  portions  of  an  article  in  Scribner's 
Magazine  for  March,  1890,  of  an  article  in  the  Forum  for  July,  1892, 
and  of  the  President's  Address  before  the  Society  for  Psychical 
Research,  published  in  the  Proceedings  for  June,  1896,  and  in 
Science. 


300         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

ties,  and  must  be  held  untrue.  When,  moreover,  as 
so  often  happens,  the  reports  of  them  are  vague  and 
indirect;  when  they  come  as  mere  marvels  and  od- 
dities rather  than  as  things  of  serious  moment,  —  one 
neglects  or  denies  them  with  the  best  of  scientific 
consciences.  Only  the  born  geniuses  let  themselves 
be  worried  and  fascinated  by  these  outstanding  ex- 
ceptions, and  get  no  peace  till  they  are  brought 
within  the  fold.  Your  Galileos,  Galvanis,  Fresnels, 
Purkinjes,  and  Darwins  are  always  getting  confounded 
and  troubled  by  insignificant  things.  Any  one  will 
renovate  his  science  who  will  steadily  look  after  the 
irregular  phenomena.  And  when  the  science  is  re- 
newed, its  new  formulas  often  have  more  of  the  voice 
of  the  exceptions  in  them  than  of  what  were  supposed 
to  be  the  rules. 

No  part  of  the  unclassified  residuum  has  usually 
been  treated  with  a  more  contemptuous  scientific 
disregard  than  the  mass  of  phenomena  generally 
called  mystical.  Physiology  will  have  nothing  to 
do  with  them.  Orthodox  psychology  turns  its  back 
upon  them.  Medicine  sweeps  them  out;  or,  at  most, 
when  in  an  anecdotal  vein,  records  a  few  of  them  as 
'  effects  of  the  imagination,'  —  a  phrase  of  mere  dis- 
missal, whose  meaning,  in  this  connection,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  make  precise.  All  the  while,  however,  the 
phenomena  are  there,  lying  broadcast  over  the  surface 
of  history.  No  matter  where  you  open  its  pages, 
you  find  things  recorded  under  the  name  of  divina- 
tions, inspirations,  demoniacal  possessions,  apparitions, 
trances,  ecstasies,  miraculous  healings  and  produc- 
tions of  disease,  and  occult  powers  possessed  by 
peculiar  individuals  over  persons  and  things  in  their 
neighborhood.  We  suppose  that '  mediumship  '  origi- 


Psychical  Research.  301 

nated  in  Rochester,  N.  Y.,  and  animal  magnetism 
with  Mesmer;  but  once  look  behind  the  pages  of 
official  history,  in  personal  memoirs,  legal  documents, 
and  popular  narratives  and  books  of  anecdote,  and 
you  will  find  that  there  never  was  a  time  when  these 
things  were  not  reported  just  as  abundantly  as  now. 
We  college-bred  gentry,  who  follow  the  stream  of 
cosmopolitan  culture  exclusively,  not  infrequently 
stumble  upon  some  old-established  journal,  or  some 
voluminous  native  author,  whose  names  are  never 
heard  of  in  our  circle,  but  who  number  their  readers 
by  the  quarter-million.  It  always  gives  us  a  little 
shock  to  find  this  mass  of  human  beings  not  only 
living  and  ignoring  us  and  all  our  gods,  but  actually 
reading  and  writing  and  cogitating  without  ever  a 
thought  of  our  canons  and  authorities.  Well,  a  pub- 
lic no  less  large  keeps  and  transmits  from  generation 
to  generation  the  traditions  and  practices  of  the 
occult;  but  academic  science  cares  as  little  for  its 
beliefs  and  opinions  as  you,  gentle  reader,  care  for 
those  of  the  readers  of  the  Waverley  and  the  Fireside 
Companion.  To  no  one  type  of  mind  is  it  given  to 
discern  the  totality  of  truth.  Something  escapes  the 
best  of  us,  —  not  accidentally,  but  systematically,  and 
because  we  have  a  twist.  The  scientific-academic 
mind  and  the  feminine-mystical  mind  shy  from  each 
other's  facts,  just  as  they  fly  from  each  other's  temper 
and  spirit.  Facts  are  there  only  for  those  who  have 
a  mental  affinity  with  them.  When  once  they  are 
indisputably  ascertained  and  admitted,  the  academic 
and  critical  minds  are  by  far  the  best  fitted  ones  to 
interpret  and  discuss  them,  —  for  surely  to  pass  from 
mystical  to  scientific  speculations  is  like  passing  from 
lunacy  to  sanity ;  but  on  the  other  hand  if  there  is 


Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

anything  which  human  history  demonstrates,  it  is  the 
extreme  slowness  with  which  the  ordinary  academic 
and  critical  mind  acknowledges  facts  to  exist  which 
present  themselves  as  wild  facts,  with  no  stall  or 
pigeon-hole,  or  as  facts  which  threaten  to  break  up 
the  accepted  system.  In  psychology,  physiology, 
and  medicine,  wherever  a  debate  between  the  mystics 
and  the  scientifics  has  been  once  for  all  decided,  it 
is  the  mystics  who  have  usually  proved  to  be  right 
about  the  facts,  while  the  scientifics  had  the  better  of 
it  in  respect  to  the  theories.  The  most  recent  and 
flagrant  example  of  this  is  '  animal  magnetism,'  whose 
facts  were  stoutly  dismissed  as  a  pack  of  lies  by 
academic  medical  science  the  world  over,  until  the 
non-mystical  theory  of  '  hypnotic  suggestion '  was 
found  for  them,  —  when  they  were  admitted  to  be 
so  excessively  and  dangerously  common  that  special 
penal  laws,  forsooth,  must  be  passed  to  keep  all  per- 
sons unequipped  with  medical  diplomas  from  taking 
part  in  their  production.  Just  so  stigmatizations,  invul- 
nerabilities, instantaneous  cures,  inspired  discourses, 
and  demoniacal  possessions,  the  records  of  which 
were  shelved  in  our  libraries  but  yesterday  in  the 
alcove  headed  '  superstitions,'  now,  under  the  brand- 
new  title  of  '  cases  of  hystero-epilepsy,'  are  repub- 
lished,  reobserved,  and  reported  with  an  even  too 
credulous  avidity. 

Repugnant  as  the  mystical  style  of  philosophizing 
may  be  (especially  when  self-complacent),  there  is  no 
sort  of  doubt  that  it  goes  with  a  gift  for  meeting  with 
certain  kinds  of  phenomenal  experience.  The  writer 
of  these  pages  has  been  forced  in  the  past  few  years 
to  this  admission ;  and  he  now  believes  that  he  who 
will  pay  attention  to  facts  of  the  sort  dear  to  mystics. 


Psychical  Research.  303 

while  reflecting  upon  them  in  academic-scientific  ways, 
will  be  in  the  best  possible  position  to  help  philoso- 
phy. It  is  a  circumstance  of  good  augury  that  cer- 
tain scientifically  trained  minds  in  all  countries  seem 
drifting  to  the  same  conclusion.  The  Society  for 
Psychical  Research  has  been  one  means  of  bringing 
science  and  the  occult  together  in  England  and 
America;  and  believing  that  this  Society  fulfils  a 
function  which,  though  limited,  is  destined  to  be  not 
unimportant  in  the  organization  of  human  knowl- 
edge, I  am  glad  to  give  a  brief  account  of  it  to  the 
uninstructed  reader. 

According  to  the  newspaper  and  drawing-room 
myth,  soft-headedness  and  idiotic  credulity  are  the 
bond  of  sympathy  in  this  Society,  and  general  won- 
der-sickness its  dynamic  principle.  A  glance  at  the 
membership  fails,  however,  to  corroborate  this  view. 
The  president  is  Prof.  Henry  Sidgwick,1  known  by 
his  other  deeds  as  the  most  incorrigibly  and  exasper- 
atingly  critical  and  sceptical  mind  in  England.  The 
hard-headed  Arthur  Balfour  is  one  vice-president,  and 
the  hard-headed  Prof.  J.  P.  Langley,  secretary  of  the 
Smithsonian  Institution,  is  another.  Such  men  as 
Professor  Lodge,  the  eminent  English  physicist,  and 
Professor  Richet,  the  eminent  French  physiologist, 
are  among  the  most  active  contributors  to  the  Soci- 
ety's Proceedings;  and  through  the  catalogue  of 
membership  are  sprinkled  names  honored  through- 
out the  world  for  their  scientific  capacity.  In  fact, 
were  I  asked  to  point  to  a  scientific  journal  where 
hard-headedness  and  never-sleeping  suspicion  of 
sources  of  error  might  be  seen  in  their  full  bloom, 

1  Written  in  1891.  Since  then,  Mr.  Balfour,  the  present  writer, 
*ad  Professor  William  Crookes  have  held  the  presidential  office. 


304         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

I  think  I  should  have  to  fall  back  on  the  Proceed- 
ings of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research.  The 
common  run  of  papers,  say  on  physiological  subjects, 
which  one  finds  in  other  professional  organs,  are  apt 
to  show  a  far  lower  level  of  critical  consciousness. 
Indeed,  the  rigorous  canons  of  evidence  applied  a 
few  years  ago  to  testimony  in  the  case  of  certain 
'  mediums  '  led  to  the  secession  from  the  Society  of  a 
number  of  spiritualists.  Messrs.  Stainton  Moses  and 
A.  R.  Wallace,  among  others,  thought  that  no  expe- 
riences based  on  mere  eyesight  could  ever  have  a 
chance  to  be  admitted  as  true,  if  such  an  impossibly 
exacting  standard  of  proof  were  insisted  on  in  every 
case. 

The  S.  P.  R.,  as  I  shall  call  it  for  convenience,  was 
founded  in  1882  by  a  number  of  gentlemen,  foremost 
among  whom  seem  to  have  been  Professors  Sidgwick, 
W.  F.  Barrett,  and  Balfour  Stewart,  and  Messrs.  R.  H. 
Hutton,  Hensleigh  Wedgwood,  Edmund  Gurney,  and 
F.  W.  H.  Myers.  Their  purpose  was  twofold,  —  first, 
to  carry  on  systematic  experimentation  with  hypno- 
tic subjects,  mediums,  clairvoyants,  and  others;  and, 
secondly,  to  collect  evidence  concerning  apparitions, 
haunted  houses,  and  similar  phenomena  which  are 
incidentally  reported,  but  which,  from  their  fugitive 
character,  admit  of  no  deliberate  control.  Professor 
Sidgwick,  in  his  introductory  address,  insisted  that 
the  divided  state  of  public  opinion  on  all  these  mat- 
ters was  a  scandal  to  science,  —  absolute  disdain  on 
a  priori  grounds  characterizing  what  may  be  called 
professional  opinion,  while  indiscriminate  credulity 
was  too  often  found  among  those  who  pretended  to 
have  a  first-hand  acquaintance  with  the  facts. 

As   a  sort   of   weather  bureau    for   accumulating 


Psychical  Research.  305 

reports  of  such  meteoric  phenomena  as  apparitions, 
the  S.  P.  R.  has  done  an  immense  amount  of  work. 
As  an  experimenting  body,  it  cannot  be  said  to 
have  completely  fulfilled  the  hopes  of  its  founders. 
The  reasons  for  this  lie  in  two  circumstances :  first, 
the  clairvoyant  and  other  subjects  who  will  allow 
themselves  to  be  experimented  upon  are  few  and  far 
between  ;  and,  secondly,  work  with  them  takes  an  im- 
mense amount  of  time,  and  has  had  to  be  carried  on  at 
odd  intervals  by  members  engaged  in  other  pursuits. 
The  Society  has  not  yet  been  rich  enough  to  control 
the  undivided  services  of  skilled  experimenters  in  this 
difficult  field.  The  loss  of  the  lamented  Edmund 
Gurney,  who  more  than  any  one  else  had  leisure  to 
devote,  has  been  so  far  irreparable.  But  were  there 
no  experimental  work  at  all,  and  were  the  S.  P.  R. 
nothing  but  a  weather-bureau  for  catching  sporadic 
apparitions,  etc.,  in  their  freshness,  I  am  disposed  to 
think  its  function  indispensable  in  the  scientific  or- 
ganism. If  any  one  of  my  readers,  spurred  by  the 
thought  that  so  much  smoke  must  needs  betoken  fire, 
has  ever  looked  into  the  existing  literature  of  the 
supernatural  for  proof,  he  will  know  what  I  mean. 
This  literature  is  enormous,  but  it  is  practically 
worthless  for  evidential  purposes.  Facts  enough  are 
cited,  indeed ;  but  the  records  of  them  are  so  fallible 
and  imperfect  that  at  most  they  lead  to  the  opinion 
that  it  may  be  well  to  keep  a  window  open  upon  that 
quarter  in  one's  mind. 

In  the  S.  P.  R.'s  Proceedings,  on  the  contrary,  3 
different  law  prevails.  Quality,  and  not  mere  quan- 
tity, is  what  has  been  mainly  kept  in  mind.  The  wit- 
nesses, where  possible,  have  in  every  reported  case 
been  cross-examined  personally,  the  collateral  facts 


306         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

have  been  looked  up,  and  the  story  appears  with  its 
precise  coefficient  of  evidential  worth  stamped  on  it, 
so  that  all  may  know  just  what  its  weight  as  proof  may 
be.  Outside  of  these  Proceedings,  I  know  of  no  sys- 
tematic attempt  to  weigh  the  evidence  for  the  super- 
natural. This  makes  the  value  of  the  volumes  already 
published  unique ;  and  I  firmly  believe  that  as  the 
years  go  on  and  the  ground  covered  grows  still  wider, 
the  Proceedings  will  more  and  more  tend  to  super- 
sede all  other  sources  of  information  concerning  phe- 
nomena traditionally  deemed  occult.  Collections  of 
this  sort  are  usually  best  appreciated  by  the  rising 
generation.  The  young  anthropologists  and  psychol- 
ogists who  will  soon  have  full  occupancy  of  the  stage 
will  feel  how  great  a  scientific  scandal  it  has  been  to 
leave  a  great  mass  of  human  experience  to  take  its 
chances  between  vague  tradition  and  credulity  on  the 
one  hand  and  dogmatic  denial  at  long  range  on  the 
other,  with  no  body  of  persons  extant  who  are  willing 
and  competent  to  study  the  matter  with  both  patience 
and  rigor.  If  the  Society  lives  long  enough  for  the 
public  to  become  familiar  with  its  presence,  so  that 
any  apparition,  or  house  or  person  infested  with  un- 
accountable noises  or  disturbances  of  material  objects, 
will  as  a  matter  of  course  be  reported  to  its  officers,  we 
shall  doubtless  end  by  having  a  mass  of  facts  concrete 
enough  to  theorize  upon.  Its  sustainers,  therefore, 
should  accustom  themselves  to  the  idea  that  its  first 
duty  is  simply  to  exist  from  year  to  year  and  perform 
this  recording  function  well,  though  no  conclusive 
results  of  any  sort  emerge  at  first.  All  our  learned 
societies  have  begun  in  some  such  modest  way. 

But  one  cannot  by  mere  outward  organization  make 
much  progress  in   matters  scientific.     Societies  can 


Psychical  Research.  307 

back  men  of  genius,  but  can  never  take  their  place. 
The  contrast  between  the  parent  Society  and  the 
American  Branch  illustrates  this.  In  England,  a  little 
group  of  men  with  enthusiasm  and  genius  for  the 
work  supplied  the  nucleus ;  in  this  country,  Mr. 
Hodgson  had  to  be  imported  from  Europe  before 
any  tangible  progress  was  made.  What  perhaps  more 
than  anything  else  has  held  the  Society  together  in 
England  is  Professor  Sidgwick's  extraordinary  gift  of 
inspiring  confidence  in  diverse  sorts  of  people.  Such 
tenacity  of  interest  in  the  result  and  such  absolute 
impartiality  in  discussing  the  evidence  are  not  once 
in  a  century  found  in  an  individual.  His  obstinate 
belief  that  there  is  something  yet  to  be  brought  to 
light  communicates  patience  to  the  discouraged ;  his 
constitutional  inability  to  draw  any  precipitate  con- 
clusion reassures  those  who  are  afraid  of  being  dupes. 
Mrs.  Sidgwick  —  a  sister,  by  the  way,  of  the  great 
Arthur  Balfour  —  is  a  worthy  ally  of  her  husband  in 
this  matter,  showing  a  similarly  rare  power  of  hold- 
ing her  judgment  in  suspense,  and  a  keenness  of 
observation  and  capacity  for  experimenting  with 
human  subjects  which  are  rare  in  either  sex. 

The  worker  of  the  Society,  as  originally  constituted, 
was  Edmund  Gurney.  Gurney  was  a  man  of  the 
rarest  sympathies  and  gifts.  Although,  like  Carlyle, 
he  used  to  groan  under  the  burden  of  his  labors,  he 
yet  exhibited  a  colossal  power  of  dispatching  business 
and  getting  through  drudgery  of  th§  most  repulsive 
kind.  His  two  thick  volumes  on  '  Phantasms  of  the 
Living/  collected  and  published  in  three  years,  are  a 
proof  of  this.  Besides  this,  he  had  exquisite  artistic 
instincts,  and  his  massive  volume  on  'The  Power  of 
Sound'  was,  when  it  appeared,  the  most  important 


308         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

work  on  aesthetics  in  the  English  language.  He  had 
also  the  tenderest  heart  and  a  mind  of  rare  meta- 
physical power,  as  his  volumes  of  essays,  '  Tertium 
Quid,'  will  prove  to  any  reader.  Mr.  Frederic  Myers, 
already  well  known  as  one  of  the  most  brilliant  of 
English  essayists,  is  the  ingenium  prafervidum  of 
the  S.  P.  R.  Of  the  value  of  Mr.  Myers's  theoretic 
writings  I  will  say  a  word  later.  Dr.  Hodgson,  the 
American  secretary,  is  distinguished  by  a  balance  of 
mind  almost  as  rare  in  its  way  as  Sidgwick's.  He  is 
persuaded  of  the  reality  of  many  of  the  phenomena 
called  spiritualistic,  but  he  also  has  uncommon  keen- 
ness in  detecting  error ;  and  it  is  impossible  to  say  in 
advance  whether  it  will  give  him  more  satisfaction 
to  confirm  or  to  smash  a  given  case  offered  to  his 
examination. 

It  is  now  time  to  cast  a  brief  look  upon  the  actual 
contents  of  these  Proceedings.  The  first  two  years 
were  largely  taken  up  with  experiments  in  thought- 
transference.  The  earliest  lot  of  these  were  made 
with  the  daughters  of  a  clergyman  named  Creery,  and 
convinced  Messrs.  Balfour  Stewart,  Barrett,  Myers,  and 
Gurney  that  the  girls  had  an  inexplicable  power  of 
guessing  names  and  objects  thought  of  by  other  per- 
sons. Two  years  later,  Mrs.  Sidgwick  and  Mr.  Gurney, 
recommencing  experiments  with  the  same  girls,  de- 
tected them  signalling  to  each  other.  It  is  true  that 
for  the  most  part  the  conditions  of  the  earlier  series 
had  excluded  signalling,  and  it  is  also  possible  that  the 
cheating  may  have  grafted  itself  on  what  was  origi- 
nally a  genuine  phenomenon.  Yet  Gurney  was  wise 
in  abandoning  the  entire  series  to  the  scepticism  of  the 
reader.  Many  critics  of  the  S.  P.  R.  seem  out  of  all 


Psychical  Research.  309 

its  labors  to  have  heard  only  of  this  case.  But  there 
are  experiments  recorded  with  upwards  of  thirty  other 
subjects.  Three  were  experimented  upon  at  great 
length  during  the  first  two  years :  one  was  Mr.  G.  A. 
Smith ;  the  other  two  were  young  ladies  in  Liverpool 
in  the  employment  of  Mr.  Malcolm  Guthrie. 

It  is  the  opinion  of  all  who  took  part  in  these  lat- 
ter experiments  that  sources  of  conscious  and  uncon- 
scious deception  were  sufficiently  excluded,  and  that 
the  large  percentage  of  correct  reproductions  by  the 
subjects  of  words,  diagrams,  and  sensations  occupying 
other  persons'  consciousness  were  entirely  inexplicable 
as  results  of  chance.  The  witnesses  of  these  per- 
formances were  in  fact  all  so  satisfied  of  the  genuine- 
ness of  the  phenomena,  that  '  telepathy '  has  figured 
freely  in  the  papers  of  the  Proceedings  and  in  Gur- 
ney's  book  on  Phantasms  as  a  vera  causa  on  which 
additional  hypotheses  might  be  built.  No  mere 
reader  can  be  blamed,  however,  if  he  demand,  for  so 
revolutionary  a  belief,  a  more  overwhelming  bulk  of 
testimony  than  has  yet  been  supplied.  Any  day,  of 
course,  may  bring  in  fresh  experiments  in  successful 
picture-guessing.  But  meanwhile,  and  lacking  that,  we 
can  only  point  out  that  the  present  data  are  strength- 
ened in  the  flank,  so  to  speak,  by  all  observations  that 
tend  to  corroborate  the  possibility  of  other  kindred 
phenomena,  such  as  telepathic  impression,  clairvoy- 
ance, or  what  is  called  '  test-mediumship.'  The  wider 
genus  will  naturally  cover  the  narrower  species  with 
its  credit. 

Gurney's  papers  on  hypnotism  must  be  mentioned 
next.  Some  of  them  are  less  concerned  with  estab- 
lishing new  facts  than  with  analyzing  old  ones.  But 
omitting  these,  we  find  that  in  the  line  of  pure  obser- 


jio          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

vation  Gurney  claims  to  have  ascertained  in  more 
than  one  subject  the  following  phenomenon:  The 
subject's  hands  are  thrust  through  a  blanket,  which 
screens  the  operator  from  his  eyes,  and  his  mind  is 
absorbed  in  conversation  with  a  third  person.  The 
operator  meanwhile  points  with  his  finger  to  one  of 
the  ringers  of  the  subject,  which  finger  alone  responds 
to  this  silent  selection  by  becoming  stiff  or  anaes- 
thetic, as  the  case  may  be.  The  interpretation  is 
difficult,  but  the  phenomenon,  which  I  have  myself 
witnessed,  seems  authentic. 

Another  observation  made  by  Gurney  seems  to 
prove  the  possibility  of  the  subject's  mind  being 
directly  influenced  by  the  operator's.  The  hyp- 
notized subject  responds,  or  fails  to  respond,  to 
questions  asked  by  a  third  party  according  to  the 
operator's  silent  permission  or  refusal.  Of  course, 
in  these  experiments  all  obvious  sources  of  deception 
were  excluded.  But  Gurney's  most  important  con- 
tribution to  our  knowledge  of  hypnotism  was  his 
series  of  experiments  on  the  automatic  writing  of 
subjects  who  had  received  post-hypnotic  suggestions. 
For  example,  a  subject  during  trance  is  told  that  he 
will  poke  the  fire  in  six  minutes  after  waking.  On 
being  waked  he  has  no  memory  of  the  order,  but 
while  he  is  engaged  in  conversation  his  hand  is  placed 
on  a  planchette,  which  immediately  writes  the  sen- 
tence, "  P.,  you  will  poke  the  fire  in  six  minutes." 
Experiments  like  this,  which  were  repeated  in  great 
variety,  seem  to  prove  that  below  the  upper  con- 
sciousness the  hypnotic  consciousness  persists,  en- 
grossed with  the  suggestion  and  able  to  express  itself 
through  the  involuntarily  moving  hand. 

Gurney  shares,  therefore,  with  Janet  and  Binet,  the 


Psychical  Research.  311 

credit  of  demonstrating  the  simultaneous  existence  of 
two  different  strata  of  consciousness,  ignorant  of  each 
other,  in  the  same  person.  The  '  extra-consciousness,' 
as  one  may  call  it,  can  be  kept  on  tap,  as  it  were,  by  the 
method  of  automatic  writing.  This  discovery  marks 
a  new  era  in  experimental  psychology,  and  it  is  impos- 
sible to  overrate  its  importance.  But  Gurney's  great- 
est piece  of  work  is  his  laborious  '  Phantasms  of  the 
Living.'  As  an  example  of  the  drudgery  stowed  away 
in  the  volumes,  it  may  suffice  to  say  that  in  looking 
up  the  proofs  for  the  alleged  physical  phenomena  of 
witchcraft,  Gurney  reports  a  careful  search  through 
two  hundred  and  sixty  books  on  the  subject,  with  the 
result  of  finding  no  first-hand  evidence  recorded  in 
the  trials  except  the  confessions  of  the  victims  them- 
selves ;  and  these,  of  course,  are  presumptively  due 
to  either  torture  or  hallucination.  This  statement, 
made  in  an  unobtrusive  note,  is  only  one  instance  of 
the  care  displayed  throughout  the  volumes.  In  the 
course  of  these,  Gurney  discusses  about  seven  hun- 
dred cases  of  apparitions  which  he  collected.  A  large 
number  of  these  were  '  veridical,'  in  the  sense  of  coin- 
ciding with  some  calamity  happening  to  the  person 
who  appeared.  Gurney's  explanation  is  that  the, mind 
of  the  person  undergoing  the  calamity  was  at  that 
moment  able  to  impress  the  mind  of  the  percipient 
with  an  hallucination. 

Apparitions,  on  this  '  telepathic  '  theory,  may  be 
called  '  objective  '  facts,  although  they  are  not  '  mate- 
rial '  facts.  In  order  to  test  the  likelihood  of  such 
veridical  hallucinations  being  due  to  mere  chance, 
Gurney  instituted  the  '  census  of  hallucinations,'  which 
has  been  continued  with  the  result  of  obtaining  an- 
swers from  over  twenty-five  thousand  persons,  asked 


312          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

at  random  in  different  countries  whether,  when  in 
good  health  and  awake,  they  had  ever  heard  a  voice, 
seen  a  form,  or  felt  a  touch  which  no  material  pres- 
ence could  account  for.  The  result  seems  to  be, 
roughly  speaking,  that  in  England  about  one  adult 
in  ten  has  had  such  an  experience  at  least  once  in  his 
life,  and  that  of  the  experiences  themselves  a  large 
number  coincide  with  some  distant  event.  The  ques- 
tion is,  Is  the  frequency  of  these  latter  cases  too  great 
to  be  deemed  fortuitous,  and  must  we  suppose  an  oc- 
cult connection  between  the  two  events?  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Sidgwick  have  worked  out  this  problem  on  the 
basis  of  the  English  returns,  seventeen  thousand  in 
number,  with  a  care  and  thoroughness  that  leave 
nothing  to  be  desired.  Their  conclusion  is  that  the 
cases  where  the  apparition  of  a  person  is  seen  on  the 
day  of  his  death  are  four  hundred  and  forty  times  too 
numerous  to  be  ascribed  to  chance.  The  reasoning 
employed  to  calculate  this  number  is  simple  enough. 
If  there  be  only  a  fortuitous  connection  between  the 
death  of  an  individual  and  the  occurrence  of  his  ap- 
parition to  some  one  at  a  distance,  the  death  is  no 
more  likely  to  fall  on  the  same  day  as  the  apparition 
than  it  is  to  occur  on  the  same  day  with  any  other 
event  in  nature.  But  the  chance-probability  that  any 
individual's  death  will  fall  on  any  given  day  marked 
in  advance  by  some  other  event  is  just  equal  to  the 
chance-probability  that  the  individual  will  die  at  all 
on  any  specified  day;  and  the  national  death-rate 
gives  that  probability  as  one  in  nineteen  thousand. 
If,  then,  when  the  death  of  a  person  coincides  with 
an  apparition  of  the  same  person,  the  coincidence  be 
merely  fortuitous,  it  ought  not  to  occur  oftener  than 
once  in  nineteen  thousand  cases.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 


Psychical  Research.  313 

however,  it  does  occur  (according  to  the  census)  once 
in  forty-three  cases,  a  number  (as  aforesaid)  four  hun- 
dred and  forty  times  too  great.  The  American  census, 
of  some  seven  thousand  answers,  gives  a  remarkably 
similar  result  Against  this  conclusion  the  only  ra- 
tional answer  that  I  can  see  is  that  the  data  are  still 
too  few;  that  the  net  was  not  cast  wide  enough; 
and  that  we  need,  to  get  fair  averages,  far  more  than 
twenty-four  thousand  answers  to  the  census  question. 
This  may,  of  course,  be  true,  though  it  seems  exceed- 
ingly unlikely;  and  in  our  own  twenty-four  thousand 
answers  veridical  cases  may  possibly  have  heaped 
themselves  unduly. 

The  next  topic  worth  mentioning  in  the  Proceed- 
ings is  the  discussion  of  the  physical  phenomena  of 
mediumship  (slate-writing,  furniture-moving,  and  so 
forth)  by  Mrs.  Sidgwick,  Mr.  Hodgson,  and  '.Mr. 
Davey.'  This,  so  far  as  it  goes,  is  destructive  of  the 
claims  of  all  the  mediums  examined.  '  Mr.  Davey ' 
himself  produced  fraudulent  slate-writing  of  the  high- 
est order,  while  Mr.  Hodgson,  a  '  sitter '  in  his  confi- 
dence, reviewed  the  written  reports  of  the  series  of 
his  other  sitters,  —  all  of  them  intelligent  persons,  — 
and  showed  that  in  every  case  they  failed  to  see  the 
essential  features  of  what  was  done  before  their  eyes. 
This  Davey-Hodgson  contribution  is  probably  the 
most  damaging  document  concerning  eye-witnesses' 
evidence  that  has  ever  been  produced.  Another  sub- 
stantial bit  of  work  based  on  personal  observation  is 
Mr.  Hodgson's  report  on  Madame  Blavatsky's  claims 
to  physical  mediumship.  This  is  adverse  to  the  lady's 
pretensions ;  and  although  some  of  Madame  Blavat- 
sky's friends  make  light  of  it,  it  is  a  stroke  from  which 
her  reputation  will  not  recover. 


314         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

Physical  mediumship  in  all  its  phases  has  fared  hard 
in  the  Proceedings.  The  latest  case  reported  on  is 
that  of  the  famous  Eusapia  Paladino,  who  being  de- 
tected in  fraud  at  Cambridge,  after  a  brilliant  career 
of  success  on  the  continent,  has,  according  to  the 
draconian  rules  of  method  which  govern  the  Society, 
been  ruled  out  from  a  further  hearing.  The  case  of 
Stainton  Moses,  on  the  other  hand,  concerning  which 
Mr.  Myers  has  brought  out  a  mass  of  unpublished 
testimony,  seems  to  escape  from  the  universal  con- 
demnation, and  appears  to  force  upon  us  what  Mr. 
Andrew  Lang  calls  the  choice  between  a  moral  and 
a  physical  miracle. 

In  the  case  of  Mrs.  Piper,  not  a  physical  but  a  trance 
medium,  we  seem  to  have  no  choice  offered  at  all. 
Mr.  Hodgson  and  others  have  made  prolonged  study 
of  this  lady's  trances,  and  are  all  convinced  that  super- 
normal powers  of  cognition  are  displayed  therein. 
These  are primd  facie  due  to  '  spirit-control.'  But  the 
conditions  are  so  complex  that  a  dogmatic  decision 
either  for  or  against  the  spirit-hypothesis  must  as  yet 
be  postponed. 

One  of  the  most  important  experimental  contribu- 
tions to  the  Proceedings  is  the  article  of  Miss  X.  on 
'  Crystal  Vision.'  Many  persons  who  look  fixedly  into 
a  crystal  or  other  vaguely  luminous  surface  fall  into  a 
kind  of  daze,  and  see  visions.  Miss  X.  has  this  sus- 
ceptibility in  a  remarkable  degree,  and  is,  moreover, 
an  unusually  intelligent  critic.  She  reports  many  vis- 
ions which  can  only  be  described  as  apparently  clair- 
voyant, and  others  which  beautifully  fill  a  vacant  niche 
in  our  knowledge  of  subconscious  mental  operations. 
For  example,  looking  into  the  crystal  before  breakfast 
one  morning  she  reads  in  printed  characters  of  the 


Psychical  Research.  315 

death  of  a  lady  of  her  acquaintance,  the  date  and  other 
circumstances  all  duly  appearing  in  type.  Startled  by 
this,  she  looks  at  the  '  Times  '  of  the  previous  day  for 
verification,  and  there  among  the  deaths  are  the  iden- 
tical words  which  she  has  seen.  On  the  same  page 
of  the  Times  are  other  items  which  she  remembers 
reading  the  day  before;  and  the  only  explanation 
seems  to  be  that  her  eyes  then  inattentively  ob- 
served, so  to  speak,  the  death-item,  which  forthwith 
fell  into  a  special  corner  of  her  memory,  and  came 
out  as  a  visual  hallucination  when  the  peculiar  mod- 
ification of  consciousness  induced  by  the  crystal- 
gazing  set  in. 

Passing  from  papers  based  on  observation  to  papers 
based  on  narrative,  we  have  a  number  of  ghost  stories, 
etc.,  sifted  by  Mrs.  Sidgwick  and  discussed  by  Messrs. 
Myers  and  Podmore.  They  form  the  best  ghost  liter- 
ature I  know  of  from  the  point  of  view  of  emotional 
interest.  As  to  the  conclusions  drawn,  Mrs.  Sidg- 
wick is  rigorously  non-committal,  while  Mr.  Myers 
and  Mr.  Podmore  show  themselves  respectively  hos- 
pitable and  inhospitable  to  the  notion  that  such  stories 
have  a  basis  of  objectivity  dependent  on  the  contin- 
ued existence  of  the  dead. 

I  must  close  my  gossip  about  the  Proceedings  by 
naming  what,  after  all,  seems  to  me  the  most  import- 
ant part  of  its  contents.  This  is  the  long  series  of 
articles  by  Mr.  Myers  on  what  he  now  calls  the  '  sub- 
liminal self,'  or  what  one  might  designate  as  ultra- 
marginal  consciousness.  The  result  of  Myers's  learned 
and  ingenious  studies  in  hypnotism,  hallucinations, 
automatic  writing,  mediumship,  and  the  whole  series 
of  allied  phenomena  is  a  conviction  which  he  ex- 
presses in  the  following  terms :  — 


316         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

"  Each  of  us  is  in  reality  an  abiding  psychical  entity  far 
more  extensive  than  he  knows,  —  an  individuality  which  can 
never  express  itself  completely  through  any  corporeal  mani- 
festation. The  self  manifests  itself  through  the  organism ; 
but  there  is  always  some  part  of  the  self  unmanifested,  and 
always,  as  it  seems,  some  power  of  organic  expression  in 
abeyance  or  reserve." 

The  ordinary  consciousness  Mr.  Myers  likens  to  the 
visible  part  of  the  solar  spectrum ;  the  total  conscious- 
ness is  like  that  spectrum  prolonged  by  the  inclusion 
of  the  ultra-red  and  ultra-violet  rays.  In  the  psychic 
spectrum  the  '  ultra  '  parts  may  embrace  a  far  wider 
range,  both  of  physiological  and  of  psychical  activity, 
than  is  open  to  our  ordinary  consciousness  and  mem- 
ory. At  the  lower  end  we  have  the  physiological  ex- 
tension, mind-cures, '  stigmatization  '  of  ecstatics,  etc. ; 
in  the  upper,  the  hyper-normal  cognitions  of  the  me- 
dium-trance. Whatever  the  judgment  of  the  future 
may  be  on  Mr.  Myers's  speculations,  the  credit  will 
always  remain  to  them  of  being  the  first  attempt  in 
any  language  to  consider  the  phenomena  of  halluci- 
nation, hypnotism,  automatism,  double  personality, 
and  mediumship  as  connected  parts  of  one*  whole 
subject.  All  constructions  in  this  field  must  be  pro- 
visional, and  it  is  as  something  provisional  that  Mr. 
Myers  offers  us  his  formulations.  But,  thanks  to  him, 
we  begin  to  see  for  the  first  time  what  a  vast  inter- 
locked and  graded  system  these  phenomena,  from 
the  rudest  motor-automatisms  to  the  most  startling 
sensory-apparition,  form.  Quite  apart  from  Mr. 
Myers's '  conclusions,  his  methodical  treatment  of 
them  by  classes  and  series  is  the  first  great  step 
toward  overcoming  the  distaste  of  orthodox  science 
to  look  at  them  at  all. 


Psychical  Research.  317 

One's  reaction  on  hearsay  testimony  is  always 
determined  by  one's  own  experience.  Most  men 
who  have  once  convinced  themselves,  by  what  seems 
to  them  a  careful  examination,  that  any  one  species 
of  the  supernatural  exists,  begin  to  relax  their  vigi- 
lance as  to  evidence,  and  throw  the  doors  of  their 
minds  more  or  less  wide  open  to  the  supernatural 
along  its  whole  extent.  To  a  mind  that  has  thus  made 
its  salto  mortale,  the  minute  work  over  insignificant 
cases  and  quiddling  discussion  of '  evidential  values,' 
of  which  the  Society's  reports  are  full,  seems  insuffer- 
ably tedious.  And  it  is  so ;  few  species  of  literature 
are  more  truly  dull  than  reports  of  phantasms.  Taken 
simply  by  themselves,  as  separate  facts  to  stare  at, 
they  appear  so  devoid  of  meaning  and  sweep,  that, 
even  were  they  certainly  true,  one  would  be  tempted 
to  leave  them  out  of  one's  universe  for  being  so 
idiotic.  Every  other  sort  of  fact  has  some  context 
and  continuity  with  the  rest  of  nature.  These  alone 
are  contextless  and  discontinuous. 

Hence  I  think  that  the  sort  of  loathing  —  no  milder 
word  will  do  —  which  the  very  words  '  psychical  re- 
search '  and  '  psychical  researcher '  awaken  in  so  many 
honest  scientific  breasts  is  not  only  natural,  but  in  a 
sense  praiseworthy.  A  man  who  is  unable  himself  to 
cone  've  of  any  orbit  for  these  mental  meteors  can 
only  suppose  that  Messrs.  Gurney,  Myers,  &  Co.'s 
mood  in  dealing  with  them  must  be  that  of  silly  mar- 
velling at  so  many  detached  prodigies.  And  such 
prodigies  !  So  science  simply  falls  back  on  her  gen- 
eral non-possumns ;  and  most  of  the  would-be  critics 
of  the  Proceedings  have  been  contented  to  oppose 
to  the  phenomena  recorded  the  simple  presumption 
that  in  some  way  or  other  the  reports  must  be  fal- 


318          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

lacious,  —  for  so  far  as  the  order  of  nature  has  been 
subjected  to  really  scientific  scrutiny,  it  always  has 
been  proved  to  run  the  other  way.  But  the  oftener 
one  is  forced  to  reject  an  alleged  sort  of  fact  by  the 
use  of  this  mere  presumption,  the  weaker  does  the 
presumption  itself  get  to  be ;  and  one  might  in  course 
of  time  use  up  one's  presumptive  privileges  in  this 
way,  even  though  one  started  (as  our  anti-telepathists 
do)  with  as  good  a  case  as  the  great  induction  of 
psychology  that  all  our  knowledge  comes  by  the  use 
of  our  eyes  and  ears  and  other  senses.  And  we  must 
remember  also  that  this  undermining  of  the  strength 
of  a  presumption  by  reiterated  report  of  facts  to  the 
contrary  does  not  logically  require  that  the  facts  in 
question  should  all  be  well  proved.  A  lot  of  rumors 
in  the  air  against  a  business  man's  credit,  though  they 
might  all  be  vague,  and  no  one  of  them  amount  to 
proof  that  he  is  unsound,  would  certainly  weaken  the 
presumption  of  his  soundness.  And  all  the  more 
would  they  have  this  effect  if  they  formed  what  Gurney 
called  a  fagot  and  not  a  chain,  —  that  is,  if  they  were 
independent  of  one  another,  and  came  from  different 
quarters.  Now,  the  evidence  for  telepathy,  weak  and 
strong,  taken  just  as  it  comes,  forms  a  fagot  and  not  a 
chain.  No  one  item  cites  the  content  of  another  item 
as  part  of  its  own  proof.  But  taken  together  the  items 
have  a  certain  general  consistency ;  there  is  a  method 
in  their  madness,  so  to  speak.  So  each  of  them  adds 
presumptive  value  to  the  lot;  and  cumulatively,  as  no 
candid  mind  can  fail  to  see,  they  subtract  presumptive 
force  from  the  orthodox  belief  that  there  can  be  noth- 
ing in  any  one's  intellect  that  has  not  come  in  through 
ordinary  experiences  of  sense. 

But  it  is  a  miserable  thing  for  a  question  of  truth 


Psychical  Research.  319 

to  be  confined  to  mere  presumption  and  counter- 
presumption,  with  no  decisive  thunderbolt  of  fact  to 
clear  the  baffling  darkness.  And,  sooth  to  say,  in 
talking  so  much  of  the  merely  presumption-weaken- 
ing value  of  our  records,  I  have  myself  been  wilfully 
taking  the  point  of  view  of  the  so-called  '  rigorously 
scientific '  disbeliever,  and  making  an  ad  hominem 
plea.  My  own  point  of  view  is  different.  For  me 
the  thunderbolt  has  fallen,  and  the  orthodox  belief 
has  not  merely  had  its  presumption  weakened,  but 
the  truth  itself  of  the  belief  is  decisively  overthrown. 
If  I  may  employ  the  language  of  the  professional 
logic-shop,  a  universal  proposition  can  be  made  un- 
true by  a  particular  instance.  If  you  wish  to  upset 
the  law  that  all  crows  are  black,  you  must  not 
seek  to  show  that  no  crows  are ;  it  is  enough  if  you 
prove  one  single  crow  to  be  white.  My  own  white 
crow  is  Mrs.  Piper.  In  the  trances  of  this  medium,  I 
cannot  resist  the  conviction  that  knowledge  appears 
which  she  has  never  gained  by  the  ordinary  waking 
use  of  her  eyes  and  ears  and  wits.  What  the  source 
of  this  knowledge  may  be  I  know  not,  and  have  not 
the  glimmer  of  an  explanatory  suggestion  to  make ; 
but  from  admitting  the  fact  of  such  knowledge  I  can 
see  no  escape.  So  when  I  turn  to  the  rest  of  the 
evidence,  ghosts  and  all,  I  cannot  carry  with  me  the 
irreversibly  negative  bias  of  the  '  rigorously  scientific  ' 
mind,  with  its  presumption  as  to  what  the  true  order 
of  nature  ought  to  be.  I  feel  as  if,  though  the  evi- 
dence be  flimsy  in  spots,  it  may  nevertheless  collec- 
tively carry  heavy  weight.  The  rigorously  scientific 
mind  may,  in  truth,  easily  overshoot  the  mark. 
Science  means,  first  of  all,  a  certain  dispassionate 
method.  To  suppose  that  it  means  a  certain  set  of 


320         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

results  that  one  should  pin  one's  faith  upon  and  hug 
forever  is  sadly  to  mistake  its  genius,  and  degrades 
the  scientific  body  to  the  status  of  a  sect. 

We  all,  scientists  and  non-scientists,  live  on  some 
inclined  plane  of  credulity.  The  plane  tips  one 
way  in  one  man,  another  way  in  another ;  and  may 
he  whose  plane  tips  in  no  way  be  the  first  to  cast  a 
stone !  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  trances  I  speak  of 
have  broken  down  for  my  own  mind  the  limits  of  the 
admitted  order  of  nature.  Science,  so  far  as  science 
denies  such  exceptional  occurrences,  lies  prostrate  in 
the  dust  for  me;  and  the  most  urgent  intellectual 
need  which  I  feel  at  present  is  that  science  be  built 
up  again  in  a  form  in  which  such  things  may  have  a 
positive  place.  Science,  like  life,  feeds  on  its  own  de- 
cay. New  facts  burst  old  rules ;  then  newly  divined 
conceptions  bind  old  and  new  together  into  a  recon- 
ciling law. 

And  here  is  the  real  instructiveness  of  Messrs. 
Myers  and  Gurney's  work.  They  are  trying  with  the 
utmost  conscientiousness  to  find  a  reconciling  con- 
ception which  shall  subject  the  old  laws  of  nature 
to  the  smallest  possible  strain.  Mr.  Myers  uses  that 
method  of  gradual  approach  which  has  performed 
such  wonders  in  Darwin's  hands.  When  Darwin  met 
a  fact  which  seemed  a  poser  to  his  theory,  his  regular 
custom,  as  I  have  heard  an  able  colleague  say,  was 
to  fill  in  all  round  it  with  smaller  facts,  as  a  wagoner 
might  heap  dirt  round  a  big  rock  in  the  road,  and 
thus  get  his  team  over  without  upsetting.  So  Mr. 
Myers,  starting  from  the  most  ordinary  facts  of  inat- 
tentive consciousness,  follows  this  clue  through  a 
long  series  which  terminates  in  ghosts,  and  seeks  to 
show  that  these  are  but  extreme  manifestations  of  a 


Psychical  Research.  321 

common  truth,  —  the  truth  that  the  invisible  segments 
of  our  minds  are  susceptible,  under  rarely  realized 
conditions,  of  acting  and  being  acted  upon  by  the  in- 
visible segments  of  other  conscious  lives.  This  may 
not  be  ultimately  true  (for  the  theosophists,  with  their 
astral  bodies  and  the  like,  may,  for  aught  I  now  know, 
prove  to  be  on  the  correcter  trail),  but  no  one  can 
deny  that  it  is  in  good  scientific  form,  —  for  science 
always  takes  a  known  kind  of  phenomenon,  and  tries 
to  extend  its  range. 

I  have  myself,  as  American  agent  for  the  census, 
collected  hundreds  of  cases  of  hallucination  in  healthy 
persons.  The  result  is  to  make  me  feel  that  we  all 
have  potentially  a  '  subliminal'  self,  which  may  make 
at  any  time  irruption  into  our  ordinary  lives.  At  its 
lowest,  it  is  only  the  depository  of  our  forgotten 
memories ;  at  its  highest,  we  do  not  know  what  it  is 
at  all.  Take,  for  instance,  a  series  of  cases.  During 
sleep,  many  persons  have  something  in  them  which 
measures  the  flight  of  time  better  than  the  waking 
self  does.  It  wakes  them  at  a  preappointed  hour; 
it  acquaints  them  with  the  moment  when  they  first 
awake.  It  may  produce  an  hallucination,  —  as  in  a 
lady  who  informs  me  that  at  the  instant  of  waking 
she  has  a  vision  of  her  watch-face  with  the  hands 
pointing  (as  she  has  often  verified)  to  the  exact  time. 
It  may  be  the  feeling  that  some  physiological  period 
has  elapsed ;  but,  whatever  it  is,  it  is  subconscious. 

A  subconscious  something  may  also  preserve  ex- 
periences to  which  we  do  not  openly  attend.  A 
lady  taking  her  lunch  in  town  finds  herself  without 
her  purse.  Instantly  a  sense  comes  over  her  of  rising 
from  the  breakfast-table  and  hearing  her  purse  drop 
upon  the  floor.  On  reaching  home  she  finds  noth- 


322          Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

ing  under  the  table,  but  summons  the  servant  to 
say  where  she  has  put  the  purse.  The  servant  pro- 
duces it,  saying:  "  How  did  you  know  where  it  was? 
You  rose  and  left  the  room  as  if  you  did  n't  know 
you  'd  dropped  it."  The  same  subconscious  some- 
thing may  recollect  what  we  have  forgotten.  A  lady 
accustomed  to  taking  salicylate  of  soda  for  muscular 
rheumatism  wakes  one  early  winter  morning  with  an 
aching  neck.  In  the  twilight  she  takes  what  she  sup- 
poses to  be  her  customary  powder  from  a  drawer,  dis- 
solves it  in  a  glass  of  water,  and  is  about  to  drink  it 
down,  when  she  feels  a  sharp  slap  on  her  shoulder  and 
hears  a  voice  in  her  ear  saying,  "  Taste  it !  "  On  ex- 
amination, she  finds  she  has  got  a  morphine  powder 
by  mistake.  The  natural  interpretation  is  that  a  sleep- 
ing memory  of  the  morphine  powders  awoke  in  this 
quasi-explosive  way.  A  like  explanation  offers  itself 
as  most  plausible  for  the  following  case :  A  lady,  with 
little  time  to  catch  the  train,  and  the  expressman 
about  to  call,  is  Excitedly  looking  for  the  lost  key  of  a 
packed  trunk.  Hurrying  upstairs  with  a  bunch  of 
keys,  proved  useless,  in  her  hand,  she  hears  an 
'  objective  '  voice  distinctly  say,  "  Try  the  key  of  the 
cake-box."  Being  tried,  it  fits.  This  also  may  well 
have  been  the  effect  of  forgotten  experience. 

Now,  the  effect  is  doubtless  due  to  the  same  hallu- 
cinatory mechanism ;  but  the  source  is  less  easily  as- 
signed as  we  ascend  the  scale  of  cases.  A  lady,  for 
instance,  goes  after  breakfast  to  see  about  one  of  her 
servants  who  has  become  ill  over  night.  She  is 
startled  at  distinctly  reading  over  the  bedroom  door 
in  gilt  letters  the  word  '  small-pox.'  The  doctor  is 
sent  for,  and  ere  long  pronounces  small-pox  to  be 
the  disease,  although  the  lady  says,  "  The  thought  of 


Psychical  Research.  323 

the  girl's  having  small-pox  never  entered  my  mind 
till  I  saw  the  apparent  inscription."  Then  come 
other  cases  of  warning ;  for  example,  that  of  a  youth 
sitting  in  a  wagon  under  a  shed,  who  suddenly  hears 
his  dead  mother's  voice  say,  "  Stephen,  get  away  from 
here  quick !  "  and  jumps  out  just  in  time  to  see  the 
shed-roof  fall. 

After  this  come  the  experiences  of  persons  appear- 
ing to  distant  friends  at  or  near  the  hour  of  death. 
Then,  too,  we  have  the  trance-visions  and  utterances, 
which  may  appear  astonishingly  profuse  and  continu- 
ous, and  maintain  a  fairly  high  intellectual  level.  For 
all  these  higher  phenomena,  it  seems  to  me  that  while 
the  proximate  mechanism  is  that  of  '  hallucination,'  it 
is  straining  an  hypothesis  unduly  to  name  any  ordinary 
subconscious  mental  operation  —  such  as  expectation, 
recollection,  or  inference  from  inattentive  perception 
—  as  the  ultimate  cause  that  starts  it  up.  It  is  far 
better  tactics,  if  you  wish  to  get  rid  of  mystery,  to 
brand  the  narratives  themselves  as  dnworthy  of  trust. 
The  trustworthiness  of  most  of  them  is  to  my  own 
mind  far  from  proved.  And  yet  in  the  light  of  the 
medium-trance,  which  is  proved,  it  seems  as  if  they 
might  well  all  be  members  of  a  natural  kind  of  fact  of 
which  we  do  not  yet  know  the  full  extent. 

Thousands  of  sensitive  organizations  in  the  United 
States  to-day  live  as  steadily  in  the  light  of  these 
experiences,  and  are  as  indifferent  to  modern  sci- 
ence, as  if  they  lived  in  Bohemia  in  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury. They  are  indifferent  to  science,  because  sci- 
ence is  so  callously  indifferent  to  their  experiences. 
Although  in  its  essence  science  only  stands  for  a 
method  and  for  no  fixed  belief,  yet  as  habitually 
taken,  both  by  it0,  votaries  and  outsiders,  it  is  identi- 


324         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

fied  with  a  certain  fixed  belief,  —  the  belief  that  the 
hidden  order  of  nature  is  mechanical  exclusively,  and 
that  non-mechanical  categories  are  irrational  ways  of 
conceiving  and  explaining  even  such  things  as  human 
life.  Now,  this  mechanical  rationalism,  as  one  may 
call  it,  makes,  if  it  becomes  one's  only  way  of  think- 
ing, a  violent  breach  with  the  ways  of  thinking  that 
have  played  the  greatest  part  in  human  history.  Re- 
ligious thinking,  ethical  thinking,  poetical  thinking, 
tekological,  emotional,  sentimental  thinking,  what  one 
might  call  the  personal  view  of  life  to  distinguish  it 
from  the  impersonal  and  mechanical,  and  the  romantic 
view  of  life  to  distinguish  it  from  the  rationalistic  view, 
have  been,  and  even  still  are,  outside  of  well-drilled 
scientific  circles,  the  dominant  forms  of  thought.  But 
for  mechanical  rationalism,  personality  is  an  insub- 
stantial illusion.  The  chronic  belief  of  mankind,  that 
events  may  happen  for  the  sake  of  their  personal  sig- 
nificance, is  an  abomination ;  and  the  notions  of  our 
grandfathers  about  oracles  and  omens,  divinations  and 
apparitions,  miraculous  changes  of  heart  and  wonders 
worked  by  inspired  persons,  answers  to  prayer  and 
providential  leadings,  are  a  fabric  absolutely  baseless, 
a  mass  of  sheer  w«truth. 

Now,  of  course,  we  must  all  admit  that  the  excesses 
to  which  the  romantic  and  personal  view  of  nature 
may  lead,  if  wholly  unchecked  by  impersonal  rational- 
ism, are  direful.  Central  African  Mumbo-jumboism 
is  one  of  unchecked  romanticism's  fruits.  One  ought 
accordingly  to  sympathize  with  that  abhorrence  of 
romanticism  as  a  sufficient  world-theory;  one  ought 
to  understand  that  lively  intolerance  of  the  least  grain 
of  romanticism  in  the  views  of  life  of  other  people, 
which  are  such  characteristic  marks  of  those  who 


Psychical  Research.  325 

follow  the  scientific  professions  to-day.  Our  debt  to 
science  is  literally  boundless,  and  our  gratitude  for 
what  is  positive  in  her  teachings  must  be  correspond- 
ingly immense.  But  the  S.  P.  R.'s  Proceedings  have, 
it  seems  to  me,  conclusively  proved  one  thing  to  the 
candid  reader;  and  that  is  that  the  verdict  of  pure 
insanity,  of  gratuitous  preference  for  error,  of  super- 
stition without  an  excuse,  which  the  scientists  of  our 
day  are  led  by  their  intellectual  training  to  pronounce 
upon  the  entire  thought  of  the  past,  is  a  most  shallow 
verdict.  The  personal  and  romantic  view  of  life  has 
other  roots  besides  wanton  exuberance  of  imagination 
and  perversity  of  heart.  It  is  perennially  fed  by  facts 
of  experience,  whatever  the  ulterior  interpretation  of 
those  facts  may  prove  to  be ;  and  at  no  time  in  human 
history  would  it  have  been  less  easy  than  now  —  at 
most  times  it  would  have  been  much  more  easy  —  for 
advocates  with  a  little  industry  to  collect  in  its  favor 
an  array  of  contemporary  documents  as  good  as  those 
which  our  publications  present.  These  documents  all 
relate  to  real  experiences  of  persons.  These  experi- 
ences have  three  characters  in  common:  They  are 
capricious,  discontinuous,  and  not  easily  controlled ; 
they  require  peculiar  persons  for  their  production ;  their 
significance  seems  to  be  wholly  for  personal  life.  Those 
who  preferentially  attend  to  them,  and  still  more  those 
who  are  individually  subject  to  them,  not  only  easily 
may  find,  but  are  logically  bound  to  find,  in  them  valid 
arguments  for  their  romantic  and  personal  conception 
of  the  world's  course.  Through  my  slight  participa- 
tion in  the  investigations  of  the  S.  P.  R.  I  have  become 
acquainted  with  numbers  of  persons  of  this  sort,  for 
whom  the  very  word  '  science '  has  become  a  name 
of  reproach,  for  reasons  that  I  now  both  understand 


326         Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 

and  respect.  It  is  the  intolerance  of  science  for  such 
phenomena  as  we  are  studying,  her  peremptory  denial 
either  of  their  existence  or  of  their  significance  (ex- 
cept as  proofs  of  man's  absolute  innate  folly),  that  has 
set  science  so  apart  from  the  common  sympathies  of 
the  race.  I  confess  that  it  is  on  this,  its  humanizing 
mission,  that  the  Society's  best  claim  to  the  gratitude 
of  our  generation  seems  to  me  to  depend.  It  has 
restored  continuity  to  history.  It  has  shown  some 
reasonable  basis  for  the  most  superstitious  aberrations 
of  the  foretime.  It  has  bridged  the  chasm,  healed 
tfie  hideous  rift  that  science,  taken  in  a  certain  narrow 
way,  has  shot  into  the  human  world. 

I  will  even  go  one  step  farther.  When  from  our 
•present  advanced  standpoint  we  look  back  upon  the 
past  stages  of  human  thought,  whether  it  be  scientific 
thought  or  theological  thought,  we  are  amazed  that  a 
universe  which  appears  to  us  of  so  vast  and  myste- 
rious a  complication  should  ever  have  seemed  to 
any  one  so  little  and  plain  a  thing.  Whether  it  be 
Descartes's  world  or  Newton's,  whether  it  be  that  of 
the  materialists  of  the  last  century  or  that  of  the 
Bridgewater  treatises  of  our  own,  it  always  looks  the 
same  to  us,  —  incredibly  perspectiveless  and  short. 
Even  Lyell's,  Faraday's,  Mill's,  and  Darwin's  con- 
sciousness of  their  respective  subjects  are  already 
beginning  to  put  on  an  infantile  and  innocent  look. 
Is  it  then  likely  that  the  science  of  our  own  day  will 
escape  the  common  doom ;  that  the  minds  of  its 
votaries  will  never  look  old-fashioned  to  the  grand- 
children of  the  latter?  It  would  be  folly  to  suppose 
so.  Yet  if  we  are  to  judge  by  the  analogy  of  the 
past,  when  our  science  once  becomes  old-fashioned, 
it  will  be  more  for  its  omissions  of  fact,  for  its  igno- 


Psychical  Research.  327 

ranee  of  whole  ranges  and  orders  of  complexity  in 
the  phenomena  to  be  explained,  than  for  any  fatal 
lack  in  its  spirit  and  principles.  The  spirit  and  prin- 
ciples of  science  are  mere  affairs  of  method ;  there 
is  nothing  in  them  that  need  hinder  science  from  deal- 
ing successfully  with  a  world  in  which  personal  forces 
are  the  starting-point  of  new  effects.  The  only  form 
of  thing  that  we  directly  encounter,  the  only  experi- 
ence that  we  concretely  have,  is  our  own  personal  life. 
The  only  complete  category  of  our  thinking,  our  pro 
fessors  of  philosophy  tell  us,  is  the  category  of  person- 
ality, every  other  category  being  one  of  the  abstract 
elements  of  that.  And  this  systematic  denial  on  sci- 
ence's part  of  personality  as  a  condition  of  events, 
this  rigorous  belief  that  in  its  own  essential  and  inner- 
most nature  our  world  is  a  strictly  impersonal  world, 
may,  conceivably,  as  the  whirligig  of  time  goes  round, 
prove  to  be  the  very  defect  that  our  descendants  will 
be  most  surprised  at  in  our  own  boasted  science,  the 
omission  that  to  their  eyes  will  most  tend  to  make  // 
look  perspectiveless  and  short. 


INDEX. 


ABSOLUTISM,  12,  30. 
Abstract  conceptions,  219. 
Action,  as  a  measure  of  belief,  3,  29-30. 
Actual  world  narrower  than  ideal,  202. 
Agnosticism,  54,  Si,  126. 
Allen,  G.,  231,  235,  256. 
Alps,  leap  in  the,  59,  96. 
Alternatives,  156,  161,  202,  269. 
Ambiguity  of  choice,  156;   of  being, 

292. 

Anxsthetic  revelation,  294. 
A  priori  truths,  268. 
Apparitions,  311. 
Aristotle,  249. 

Associationism,  in  Ethics,  186. 
Atheist  and  acorn,  160. 
Authorities    in    Ethics,   204;    versus 

champions,  207. 
Axioms,  268. 

BAGEHOT,  232. 

Bain,  71,  91. 

Balfour,  9. 

Being,  its  character,  142  ;  in  Hegel, 

281. 

Belief,  59.     See  '  Faith.' 
Bellamy,  188. 
Bismarck,  228. 
Block-universe,  292. 
Blood,  B.  P.,  vi,  294. 
Brockton  murderer,  160,  177. 
Bunsen,  203,  274. 

CALVINISM,  45. 
Carlyle,  42,  44,  45,  73,  87,  173. 
'Casuistic  question  '  in  Ethics,  198. 
Causality,  147. 


Causation,  Hume's  doctrine  of,  278, 

Census  of  hallucinations,  312. 

Certitude,  13,  30. 

Chance,  149,  153-9,  178-180. 

Choice,  156. 

Christianity,  5,  14. 

Cicero,  92. 

City  of  dreadful  night,  35. 

Clark,  X.,  50. 

Classifications,  67. 

Clifford,  6,  7,  10,  14,  19,  21,  92,  230. 

Clive,  228. 

Clough,  6. 

Common-sense,  270. 

Conceptual  order  of  world,  118. 

Conscience,  186-8. 

Contradiction,  as  used  by  Hegel,  275- 

277. 

Contradictions  of  philosophers,  16. 
Crillon,  62. 
Criterion  of  truth,  15,  16;  in  Ethics, 

205. 

Crude  order  of  experience,  118. 
Crystal  vision,  314. 
Cycles  in  Nature,  220,  223-4. 

DARWIN,  221,  223,  226,  320. 

Data,  271. 

Davey,  313. 

Demands,  as  creators  of  value,  201. 

'Determination  is  negation,1  286-290. 

Determinism,  150;   the  Dilemma  of, 

145-183;  163,  166;  hard  and  soft, 

149. 

Dogs,  57. 
Dogmatism,  12. 


330 


Index. 


Doubt,  54,  109. 
Dupery,  27. 

EASY-GOING  mood,  211,  213. 

Elephant,  282. 

Emerson,  23,  175. 

Empiricism,  i.f  12,  14,  17,  278. 

England,  228. 

Environment,  its  relation  to  great  men, 

223,  226;  to  great  thoughts,  250. 
Error,  163;  duty  of  avoiding,  18. 
Essence  of  good  and  bad,  200-1. 
Ethical  ideals,  200. 
Ethical  philosophy,  208,  210,  216. 
Ethical  standards,  205  ;  diversity  of, 

200. 

Ethics,  its  three  questions,  185. 
Evidence,  objective,  13,  15,  16. 
Evil,  46,  49,  161,  190. 
Evolution,  social,  232,  237 ;    mental, 

245. 
Evolutionism,  its  test   of  right,   98- 

100. 

Expectancy,  77-80. 
Experience,  crude,  versus  rationalized, 

118 ;  tests  our  faiths,  105. 

FACTS,  271. 

Faith,  that  truth  exists,  9,  23 ;  in  our 
fellows,  24-5 ;  school  boys'  defini- 
tion of,  29;  a  remedy  for  pessi- 
mism, 60, 101 ;  religious,  56 ;  defined, 
90;  defended  against  'scientific' 
objections,  viii-xi,  91-4;  may  cre- 
ate its  own  verification,  59,  96-103. 

Familiarity  confers  rationality,  76. 

Fatalism,  88. 

Fiske,  255,  260. 

Fitzgerald,  160. 

Freedom,  103,  271. 

Free-will,  103,  145,  157. 

GALTON,  242. 

Geniuses,  226,  229. 

Ghosts,  315. 

Gnosticism,  138-140,  165,  169. 

God,  61,  68  ;  of  Nature,  43  ;  the  most 
adequate  object  for  our  mind,  116, 
122;  our  relations  to  him,  134-6; 


his  providence,   182;   his  demands 

create  obligation,  193  ;  his  function 

in  Ethics,  212-215. 
Goethe,  in. 
Good,  1 68,  200,  201. 
Goodness,  190. 

Great-man  theory  of  history,  232. 
Great    men    and    their   environment, 

216-254. 
Green,  206. 
Gryzanowski,  240. 
Gurney,  306,  307,  311. 
Guthrie,  309. 
Guyau,  188. 

HALLUCINATIONS,  Census  of,  313. 

Happiness,  33. 

Harris,  282. 

Hegel,  72,  263;  his  excessive  claims, 
272;  his  use  of  negation,  273,  290; 
of  contradiction,  274,  276;  on  being, 
281  ;  on  otherness,  283 ;  on  infin- 
ity, 284 ;  on  identity,  285 ;  on  de- 
termination, 289;  his  ontological 
emotion,  297. 

Hegelisms,  on  some,  263-298. 

Heine,  203. 

Helmholtz,  85,  91. 

Henry  IV.,  62. 

Herbart,  280. 

Hero-worship,  261. 

Hinton,  C.  H.,  it. 

Hinton,  J.,  101. 

Hodgson,  R.,  308. 

Hodgson,  S.  H.,  10. 

Honor,  50. 

Hugo,  213. 

Human  mind,  its  habit  of  abstracting, 
219. 

Hume  on  causation,  278. 

Huxley,  6,  10,  92. 

Hypnotism,  302,  309. 

Hypotheses,  live  or  dead,  2;  theil 
verification,  105  ;  of  genius,  249. 

IDEALS,  200 ;  their  conflict,  202. 
Idealism,  89,  291. 
Identity,  285. 
Imperatives,  211. 


Index. 


331 


Importance  of  individuals,  the,  255- 
262  ;  of  things,  its  ground,  257. 

Indeterminism,  150. 

Individual  differences,  259. 

Individuals,  the  importance  of,  255- 
262. 

Infinite,  284. 

Intuitionism,  in  Ethics,  186,  189. 

JEVONS,  249. 
Judgments  of  regret,  159. 

KNOWING,  12. 
Knowledge,  85. 

LEAP  on  precipice,  59,  96. 

Leibnitz,  43. 

Life,  is  it  worth  living,  32-62. 

MAGGOTS,  176-7. 

Mahdi,  the,  2,  6. 

Mallock,  32,  183. 

Marcus  Aurelius,  41.       « 

Materialism,  126. 

'  Maybes,"  59. 

Measure  of  good,  205. 

Mediumsl»ip,  physical,  313,  314. 

Melancholy,  34,  39,  42. 

Mental  evolution,  246;  structure,  114, 

117. 

Mill,  234. 
Mind,  its  triadic  structure,  114,  117; 

its  evolution,  246  ;  its  three  depart- 
ments, 114,  122,  127-8. 
Monism,  279. 
Moods,  the  strenuous  and  the  easy, 

211,  213. 
Moralists,   objective    and    subjective, 

103-108. 
Moral  judgments,  their  origin,  186-8  ; 

obligation,      192-7 ;     order,      193 ; 

philosophy,   1 84-5 . 
Moral  philosopher  and  the  moral  life. 

the,  184-215. 
Murder,  178. 
Murderer,  160,  177. 
Myers,  308,  315,  320. 
Mystical  phenomena,  300. 
Mysticism,  74. 


NAKED,  the,  281. 

Natural  theology,  40-4. 

Nature,  20,  41-4,  56. 

Negation,  as  used  by  Hegel,  273. 

Newman,  10. 

Nitrous  oxide,  294. 

Nonentity,  72. 

OBJECTIVE  evidence,  13,  15,  16. 

Obligation,  192-7. 

Occult  phenomena,  300  ;  examples  of, 

323- 

Omar  Khayam,  160. 
Optimism,  60,  102,  163. 
Options  offered  to  belief,  3,  u,  27. 
Origin  of  moral  judgments,  186-8. 
'  Other,'  in  Hegel,  283. 

PARSIMONY,  law  of,  132. 

Partaking,  268,  270,  275,  291. 

Pascal's  wager,  5,  n. 

Personality,  324,  327. 

Pessimism,  39,  40,  47,  60,  100,  101, 
161,  167. 

Philosophy,  65  ;  depends  on  personal 
demands,  93 ;  makes  world  unreal, 
39 ;  seeks  unification,  67-70 ;  the 
ultimate,  no;  its  contradictions,  16. 

Physiology,  its  prestige,  112. 

Piper,  Mrs.,  314,  319. 

Plato,  268. 

Pluralism,  vi,  151,  178,  192,  264,  267. 

Positivism,  54,  108. 

Postulates,  91-2. 

Possibilities,  151,  181-2,  292,  294. 

Powers,  our  powers  as  congruous  with 
the  world,  86. 

Providence,  180. 

Psychical  research,  what  it  has  ac- 
complished, 299-327;  Society  for 

3°3.  3°5.  325- 
Pugnacity,  49,  51. 

QUESTIONS,  three,  in  Ethics,  185. 

RATIONALISM,  12,  30. 

Rationality,  the  sentiment  of,  63-110; 
limits  of  theoretic,  65-74  ;  mystical, 
74  ;  practical,  82-4  ;  postulates  of, 
152. 


Index. 


Rational  order  of  world,  118,  125,  147. 
Reflex  action  and  theism,  111-144. 
Reflex  action  denned,  113;  it  refutes 

gnosticism,  140-1. 
Regret,  judgments  of,  1 59. 
Religion,  natural,  52;    of   humanity, 

198. 

Religious  hypothesis,  25,  28,  51. 
Religious  minds,  40. 
Renan,  170,  172. 
Renouvier,  143. 
Risks   of  belief  or  disbelief,  ix,  26 ; 

rules  for  minimizing,  94. 
Romantic  view  of  world,  324. 
Romanticism,  172-3. 
Rousseau,  4,  33,  87. 
Ruskin,  37. 

SALTER,  62. 

Scepticism,  12,  23,  109. 

Scholasticism,  13. 

Schopenhauer,  72,  169. 

Science,    10,   21  ;  its  recency,  52-4 ; 

due  to  peculiar  desire,  129-132, 147; 

its  disbelief  of  the  occult,  317-320; 

its  negation  of  personality,  324-6; 

cannot  decide  question  of  determi- 
nism, 152. 

Science  of  Ethics,  208-210. 
Selection  of  great  men,  226. 
Sentiment  of  rationality,  63. 
Seriousness,  86. 
Shakespeare,  32,  235. 
Sidgwick,  303,  307. 
Sigwart,  120,  148. 
Society  for  psychical  research,  303 ;  its 

1  Proceedings,'  305,  325. 
Sociology,  259. 
Solitude,  moral,  191. 
Space,  265. 
Spencer,  168,  218,  232-235,  246,  251, 

260. 

Stephen,  L,.,  i. 
Stephen,  Sir  J.,  i,  30,  212. 
Stoics,  274. 

Strenuous  mood,  211,  213. 
Subjectivism,  165,  170. 


Subliminal  self,"  315,  321. 
Substance,  80. 
Suicide,  38,  50,  60. 
System  in  philosophy,  13,  185,  199, 

TELEPATHY,  10,  309. 
Theism,  and  reflex  action,  111-144. 
Theism,  127, 134-6  ;  see  '  God.' 
Theology,  natural,  41  ;  Calvinistic,  45. 
Theoretic  faculty,  128. 
Thought-transference,  309. 
Thomson,  35-7,  45,  46. 
Toleration,  30. 
Tolstoi,  188. 

'  Totality,'  the  principle  of,  277. 
Triadlc  structure  of  mind,  123. 
Truth,  criteria  of,  15  ;  and  error,  18  i 
moral,  190-1. 

UNITARIANS,  126,  133. 
Unknowable,  the,  68,  81. 
Universe  =  M  +  x,  101 ;   its  ration- 
ality, 125,  «37- 
Unseen  world,  51,  54,  56,  61. 
Utopias,  168. 

VALUE,  judgments  of,  103. 

Variations,  in  heredity,  etc.,  225,  249. 

Vaudois,  48. 

Veddah,  258. 

Verification  of  theories,  95,  105-8. 

Vivisection,  58. 

WALDENSES,  47-9. 

Wallace,  239,  304. 

Whitman,  33,  64,  74. 

Wordsworth,  60. 

World,  its  ambiguity,  76;  the  in  visible, 

51,  54,  56  ;  two  orders  of,  118, 
Worth,  judgments  of,  103. 
Wright,  52. 

X.,  Miss,  314. 

ZOLA,  172. 
Zollner,  15. 


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from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


L  006  498  068  3 


UC  SOUTHER    REGONA   LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A    001  205243 


